Bright
by Lois Fogg
Summary: An AU Logan&Veronica fic that takes place sometime after Plan B, but before I Am God. When Logan succumbs to a mysterious and possibly deadly illness, Veronica is determined to discover who is responsible...and why.
1. Frozen Over

Bright by Lois Fogg (utsusemia on Live Journal)

Pairing: Logan/Veronica, ensemble

Timeline: Sometime after Plan B, but before I Am God. AU from there.

Author's Note: This is my first Veronica Mars fanfic. I wrote a lot of Sailor Moon fanfiction a few years ago, but it's been a while...any feedback is welcome (really, I mean it).

**Chapter 1: Frozen Over**

Normally, after a night of fun-filled coital entanglements, Logan Echolls felt, well, _bright_. Jaunty. Veronica would probably say "cocky,"--and be entirely aware of the double entendre, which was one of the things he loved about her.

Today, however, he felt like a rained-on, hang-dog version of his normal post-conjugal self. It possibly had something to do with his previous lover being summarily ripped from his arms and shipped across the country, and his current one kicking him out at 2am--damaging to his ego, certainly, if not particularly to his heart. More likely, it had something to do with the malevolent, death-ray glare Veronica was even now directing towards his back.

Logan picked listlessly at the buffalo burger he had brought with him from the Neptune Grand and shifted uncomfortably. Veronica was sitting with Wallace and the lovely Jackie Cook at a table just to his right. She looked away when he glanced at her, but he could tell from the small, fleeting grimace on her face that she had been staring.

Abruptly, Logan stood up. He had intended to round on Veronica--to distract his bad mood with a few oh-so-satisfying, well-placed barbs, but instead found himself gripping the table edge to keep his balance. His vision cleared and the dizziness passed after a few moments, but his legs still felt oddly weak. Oh, now that would just be the perfect cap to this day: dragging himself back to his sterile hotel suite to deal with the flu. After having assured himself he was in no immediate danger of passing out on the concrete, he started to walk away.

He would have foregone the dubious pleasure of Veronica's barbed wit, but she was staring at him so intently--and so obviously unaware that she was doing so--he couldn't help himself.

"Trying to flay me with your eyes alone? Sorry to disappoint you, Encyclopedia Brown, but super sleuths don't usually come with superpowers."

Veronica smiled tightly. "At least I don't leave a trail of radioactive evil slime wherever I go. How _will_ Hannah explain the stench?" She tilted her head and Logan noted--not so dispassionately--that pigtails framed her face very nicely. Particularly when her eyes burned like coals in her face. "Still, the world should be grateful to you, Logan. Who knew pure maliciousness could transform an ordinary jackass into Dr. Evil?"

Logan grinned. "Don't bite your lip like that, Veronica. You wouldn't want Dr. Evil to know you're jealous. He might just use it to his advantage."

He would have stuck around for more--with Veronica, he could go all night, and yes, he meant every entendre, even the ones that would probably never happen--but the dizziness returned. He walked away before the retort was halfway from her lips, hoping she didn't notice the slight unsteadiness of his gait, or the way he had to pause at the top of the steps to catch his breath.

What the _hell_ was wrong with him?

_-----------------------------_

Veronica stared after Logan for nearly thirty seconds before she realized what she was doing and turned determinedly back to her fruit salad. Was it just her imagination, or did he look strangely pale today? And something about the way he walked away...

No, Logan could certainly take care of himself. She should have learned by now to spare herself that Molotov cocktail of agony and frustration that worrying about him produced.

Gia, sporting a varsity letter jacket and a ludicrously short skirt, ran up to their table.

"Hey Veronica," she said, "have you seen Logan? I just got, like, this really weird email from a friend of mine at my old school, and I just have to show it to him. But, you know, he's been in a kind of bad mood lately, which is crazy, since the charges against him were dropped finally, and I, like, really need to talk to him."

Veronica shared a quick glance with Wallace and nearly burst out laughing. "Even more manic than normal," she muttered, which made Wallace shovel a forkful of cake into his mouth as though he were about to die of insulin deficiency.

Veronica turned back to Gia, who had watched the exchange with an unwavering expression of pleasantly confused vapidity. "He just left," she said. "I don't know where." And I don't particularly care.

"Oh, okay. If you see him, you'll let him know I'm looking for him, right?"

Veronica couldn't stop her eyebrows from arching, but she nodded.

"I think I might actually pay to see that conversation," Wallace said when Gia had left.

Jackie gave a lopsided smile. "It's sort of cute. Did you see the pastry box she was carrying? I think she wanted to give it to him."

Veronica put down her fork and stared. "You think Gia has a crush on _Logan_? Is something in the water? Letting all innocent bimbos be sucked into the evil vortex that is Logan Echolls?

Wallace rolled his eyes. "He's not evil, Veronica. You dated him, remember?"

Veronica grimaced. "So Satan's attractive. Point? Why have you been defending him so much lately, anyway?"

Wallace just gave that enigmatic, self-satisfied smile of his that drove her crazy. "Maybe I just see him more clearly than you do," he said. "Less in the way, you know."

"What's that supposed to mean? Never mind, I don't want to know."

Veronica made some excuse about doing some research on the school computers, and made her way slowly back into the school. She had that strange feeling in the back of her head that something was going on--something beyond Logan being an inexplicably attractive psychotic jackass, that is. Gia seemed really agitated about that email. _Could_ she have a crush on Logan? The very thought was enough to make Veronica vomit in her mouth. Distasteful as it would be, she had to talk to Logan today. Warn him away from using up and discarding another innocent girl. Let him dirty the sheets with sexed-up bimbos like Kendall, but he should leave Gia out of it.

_-----------------------------_

Logan had to run out in the middle of Mr. Wu's science class, and barely made it to the toilet before he began vomiting what felt like several internal organs. His vision was swimming, and he couldn't seem to catch his breath. He knew he was close to passing out on the toilet--which at least Veronica would appreciate. Eventually, the fit passed, and he leaned against the cool stall door, shaking. He was sick. Very sick. If he could manage to make it back to his car, things should be okay. At least that way he'd avoid making a spectacle of himself in school, much as Veronica would probably relish it. Slowly he stood up, and after a few moments, he was reasonably confident that he could avoid collapsing on the walk between the bathroom and the car. Carefully, he walked through the deserted halls, keeping his left hand surreptitiously on the wall in case he lost his balance. Three times he had to stop and brace himself against a fresh onslaught of dizziness and nausea, but eventually he made it. He leaned against the door and closed his eyes, attempting to gather his strength before the ride back to the Neptune Grand.

He felt her presence even before she spoke--a combination of her smell and her footsteps and the funny little breath she took whenever she was annoyed with him. He smiled, and didn't open his eyes.

"What's the matter, Logan? Still depressed over your coitus interruptus? Or did you just stay up all night banging Kendall while plotting your newest conquest? _Another_ ditz who doesn't know how far in over her head she's gotten? I thought you'd at least like some variety."

At this, Logan's eyes snapped open. Veronica's face swam into fuzzy focus in front of him and he had to remind himself to breathe, which was becoming oddly difficult regardless.

"What nefarious evil am I perpetrating now, Veronica? Or, should I be asking who I'm perpetrating it against?"

"Whom. And Gia."

Logan had to laugh, which proved to be a bad idea since it ended up coming out like so much wheezing. A line appeared between Veronica's eyebrows, like she was worrying, and he suddenly wished that anyone in the school could have found him like this except her. What was it that Dick had called her? Rich dude kryptonite? Maybe she was--she always seemed to catch him at his most vulnerable.

"Logan..." she said, her voice gentler now, "are you--"

"Oh, you know, I think your eyes are actually turning green?"

"I'm--"

He cut her off again. Anything to make her leave. "And I'd sooner seduce a hissing cockroach. In case you're interested."

Veronica's smile was brittle as glass. "I'd say you've already managed that Logan. How's _Mrs. Casablancas_ doing, by the way?"

"Better, thank you. But if you'd like to stop by sometime..."

Veronica gave a disgusted grunt and stalked away.

He waited until she was out of sight of the car before giving a sigh of pure relief. He didn't realize he was about to pass out until he heard the clink of his car keys falling from his numb fingers. By then, it was too late to do anything but give in.

_-----------------------------_

She didn't know why she paused. Usually she couldn't wait to get away from Logan when he was so intent on driving her crazy. But that "not right" sign was flashing in her head again, and she couldn't ignore it. He seemed sick--his face was too pale, his sarcasm strangely forced. There was an urgency to the way he had pushed her away that she hadn't recognized. Great, she thought, I'm worrying about him again. She had nearly decided to just go when she heard a faint clink and a sigh. It was the quality of the sigh--relieved and hopeless at the same time, that made her turn around. Her body moved before her brain had even caught up, and her nerves hummed with some kind of strange panic. When Wallace had texted her to tell her that Logan had made a beeline out of class in the middle of an experiment, she had figured he'd had some kind of urgent booty call. Now...

He had collapsed against the side of his car, and the bright yellow exterior made the pallor of his skin all the more palpable.

"Logan, what the hell...?" she caught him under his arms before he collapsed to the ground, and his head lolled over her shoulder.

"Hey, somebody! Help!" she shouted, but classes were still going on, and the parking lot was empty. She braced Logan against the car and reached into her pocket for her cell phone, but it wasn't there. Of course--she had left it in her bag, which she had left back in study hall. She cursed and felt Logan's breathing stutter. At first she thought he was conscious again and laughing, but one look at his face told her he was still out. He was having trouble breathing.

"Goddamn you, Logan!" She bit her lower lip so hard she tasted blood, which was oddly comforting. Awkwardly, she braced Logan's not inconsiderable weight with her left hand while maneuvering to fish his keys from the ground with her right. Thirty seconds of terror later, she had them.

Okay, open the car door, get him inside. "You fucking idiot," she said, and her voice was so breathy and scared she hardly recognized it. "You can't even help me a little?"

With a grunt, she heaved him onto the seat and then picked up his legs. His torso was half splayed across the dashboard, but she knew she didn't have time to right him. Ten agonizingly long seconds later, Veronica was zooming out of the Neptune High parking lot, grateful for only one thing: she knew the quickest way to the hospital.

_-----------------------------_

Thinking had not been an option on the crazed car ride there. She had run red lights, cut people off, narrowly avoided hitting pedestrians, but she had made it to the emergency room entrance in a record seven minutes. She doubted an ambulance could have done better. Of course, a bright yellow SUV driving like it's the Indy 500 tends to make people pull over to the side of the road. She had barely looked at him, but her hand kept reaching for his face, to check his pulse and make sure he was still breathing. He was still breathing when they loaded him onto a gurney and rushed him into diagnostics. But they hadn't let her follow him. Sitting here, in a plastic waiting room chair, there was not even the dubious reassurance of his warm face beneath her palm. She felt as though they had taken him much farther than a few rooms away.

As though they might have taken him away forever.

Which was precisely the kind of maudlin sap she hated. For God's sake, this was _Logan_. He'd probably just had too much to drink the night before. And too much Kendall could put anyone in a catatonic state.

But if he died--though of course he wouldn't--but if he did, would that be their last conversation? One last bit of mean-spirited snark, and no honesty, no explanations? There was so much she needed to tell him. Things that had been lurking beneath the surface for nearly a year now, a subtext played out beneath the quips and the resentful disdain. Did he feel the same way? Ever since the Sadie Hawkins dance she had wondered, and now?

She wanted to weep, but she didn't. Even now, that would be giving too much away.

_-----------------------------_

The doctor found her half an hour later. She had curly red hair and a friendly smile--which was conspicuously not in evidence as she approached her.

"I'm Dr. Michaels. You brought in Logan Echolls?" she asked, reading his name off of the chart on the clip board in front of her.

"He's not...I mean..." Veronica cleared her throat, "Is he okay?" _Is he alive?_

She frowned. "We've stabilized him. It's a good thing you found him when you did...tell me, what's your relationship with the patient?"

Ex-girlfriend. Sometime enemy. Sparring partner. "Friend," she said. If her father had been interrogating her, he would have said her voice was too firm. She was grateful, suddenly, that he wasn't here. Whatever he would read in her facial expressions, she didn't want him to know.

"Does he have any family we could contact? Next of kin?"

It was a simple answer, for all of its complicated details. His mother's a suicide. His abusive, psychotic father's in jail. His sister is off filming a B-grade slasher pic in Tahiti.

"No," Veronica said. _There's just me._ Why did that make her want to cry?

Dr. Michaels must have seen something in her face, because she gave Veronica's hand a gentle, reassuring squeeze.

"Okay, I have some questions I need to ask you, but first let me tell you what we know so far. We've induced a coma to stabilize his breathing. His kidneys seem to have failed very abruptly. Hopefully, they'll recover some function, but we're not sure."

Not sure? She forced herself to unclench her hands.

"So, Ms. Mars, can you tell me if, to your knowledge, Mr. Echolls ever had any...suicidal tendencies? Was he feeling depressed lately?"

It took Veronica a few seconds to understand her implication. "Wait...you're saying he did this to _himself_?" She felt the familiar thrum of righteous indignation with almost palpable relief. Anger was so much easier than grief.

"We don't know anything at this point," she said soothingly. "But I need to explore all the possibilities."

Veronica was about to hotly deny that Logan would do anything of the sort, but reason caught up with her before she could. After all, hadn't she herself accused him of having a death wish? He certainly hadn't denied it, and that was before the PCHers burned down his house. He'd been thinking of killing himself, that night on the bridge, before the gang jumped him. And later, he had deliberately put himself in dangerous situations, perversely hoping that someone would do the deed for him. Would it be so surprising if he had decided to do it himself, this time? If something had pushed him over the edge...something like Hannah. Veronica closed her eyes against a sudden sense of vertigo. Was it possible that Logan had decided to kill himself and she hadn't even known something was wrong? She thought she knew him better than that. Better than anyone.

"I don't know," she said finally, in a small voice. "Maybe. I'd thought...he was better, but maybe. His life," she swallowed, "it's been pretty hard, this past year."

The doctor nodded, and scribbled some notes on her file.

"Can you tell me, honestly--will he be okay?"

"Honestly?" She put down the clip board. "I don't know yet. Usually, in these cases, the first twenty four hours are the hardest. If he survives that, if his kidneys recover, then yes. This type of poisoning is relatively rare, but from what we know..."

Veronica could feel the vomit pressing against the top of her throat. "What type of poisoning?"

"We've found traces of ethylene glycol in his system."

Veronica stared.

"It's the active ingredient in antifreeze."

END of Chapter One...


	2. Eat Shit and Smile

Title: Bright, Chapter Two  
Author: Lois Fogg (utsusemia on livejournal)  
Pairing/Character: Logan/Veronica, ensemble  
Word Count: 5,600 Rating: R (for language, to be safe)  
Summary: When Logan succumbs to a mysterious and possibly deadly illness, Veronica is determined to discover who is responsible...and why.  
Spoilers: After Plan B, but before I Am God

Notes: Whew, I finally wrote another chapter! Thanks so much to all the people who commented on A Feather's Weight. If you're reading this, I hope you like this too.

Chapter Two: Eat Shit and Smile

When Wallace burst into his office that afternoon, Keith was already worried. Veronica had promised to come by right after school to help him with some filing before her shift at the Hut. Usually, if she was going to be late, she called, but his phone remained silent and all his calls to her went straight to voicemail.

Wallace was carrying her bag with him, which Keith knew was a very bad sign. His girl didn't go anywhere without her cell phone and taser.

"Mr. Mars, Veronica's missing."

Keith had expected it, but Wallace's words still hit him like a punch to the gut. "Okay, sit down and tell me what happened."

Wallace sat, but he drummed his hands on his knee like he could hardly stand to sit still. Keith sympathized. "I think she left study hall to talk to Logan, but she never came back and now Logan's car is missing."

"Wait, she wanted to talk to Logan? By herself?" Goddamn it, Keith had never trusted that kid around his daughter.

Wallace stared at the ground like he was embarrassed about something. "Yeah. Maybe that wasn't such a good idea after all."

Keith stood and fetched his taser and cell phone from his office. "Are you sure his car is missing? What about Veronica's?"

"I drove it here. Her keys were in the bag. And Logan's car..." He raised his eyebrows.

"Right. Kind of hard to miss." After a moment's thought, Keith went back into the closet and pulled out his gun. When it came to Veronica, he couldn't afford to take any chances.

"Let's go."

--------------------------------------------

Lamb had, for once, been very accommodating to Keith's concerns. Of course, Keith knew it had more to do with hating the spoiled Logan Echolls than growing a brain, but anything that made the sheriff actually do his job was fine by him. Half an hour after putting out an APB on the yellow XTerra they received a report. A cop car dropping a bloody perp at the emergency room had seen it parked in the ambulance lane.

Not for the first time, Keith wished he was still the sheriff. With the sirens blaring, Lamb made it to the hospital nearly three minutes before him--and that only because Keith decided to take a liberal approach to the traffic laws. Of all the places to discover them...

"Man, the hospital," Wallace said during the ride there. "But she's gotta be okay. I mean, _Veronica Mars_. She could deal with that punk in her sleep."

Keith smiled briefly, but he was too worried to respond.

Deputy Sacks and another officer were inspecting the vehicle when Keith arrived.

"Where's Lamb?"

Sacks jerked his head towards the double glass doors, through which Keith could see the sheriff arguing with the receptionist.

"Find anything interesting here?" he asked, hoping that his casual tone would make them forget he wasn't part of the investigation.

Sacks shrugged. "No sign of forced entry or struggle."

Keith peered past his shoulder. "What's that?" he asked, pointing to a half-opened pastry box in the back seat. It had been turned on its side and he could see a few pink sugar cookies falling out. The other officer shrugged. "Looks like it was wrapped up," he said, pointing to the gold ribbon. "Maybe a gift?"

Maybe, Keith thought, but for whom?

Sack's eyebrows drew together in sympathy. "We'll let you know if we find anything..." Keith heard the implied "Sheriff" and smiled briefly before hurrying inside. He could hear Lamb's shout as soon as the automatic doors slid open.

"What do you mean, she's not here"  
"I'm sorry sheriff, no one of that name was checked in--"

Lamb slammed his hand down on the desk. "Listen, lady. I don't care how much the kid paid you. You're going to start telling the truth right now, or I'll drag you down to the station and question you there. Maybe I'll even hold you overnight. Loosen your tongue. Got it?"

She nodded manically, but Keith could tell from here that she wasn't hiding anything. He sighed and walked up next to Lamb.

"Ma'am, I'm sorry," he said--automatically playing good cop to Lamb's bad (not as though there was generally another option with the good sheriff). "I understand you have no record of Veronica Mars, but we've had reports that she and Logan Echolls came here together and if you have any information--"

Lamb glared at him. "You're not a part of this investigation, _Mars_," he said, biting out each word.

At the same time the receptionist started and Keith noted how her eyes widened in sudden understanding. "Oh, you're looking for Logan Echolls," she said, her voice nervously accommodating. "I'm sorry sheriff, but you can't see him just now. But if you'd like to wait, I'll call the doctor and see if she can help you."

Lamb's scowl deepened. "Can't see him just now?" he mimicked, cruelly. "I'm sorry, lady, but do you see this?" He pulled out his badge. "This means that I can damn well see anyone I want."

"What's going on?" At the sound of her voice, obviously healthy, Keith's knees sagged with relief.

"Veronica!" Wallace ran to hug her. After a moment, Veronica hugged him back, her face a picture of surprised confusion.

Keith was a step behind him. "Did he hurt you?" he asked, looking her over. She seemed tired, and her eyes were ominously puffy and bloodshot, but she didn't look hurt. He wondered why he would have taken her to the hospital.

"Did who hurt me, Dad"  
"Logan, honey," he said gently. "When you didn't come back to class and Wallace saw Logan's car was gone...we worried"  
Something was distracting her. He saw from the look of dawning horror on her face that their worry had never occurred to her. Something else was going on.

"Oh God, Dad, Wallace, I'm so sorry. I should have called. I just...forgot."

Lamb had stepped up, and was staring at Veronica like he wouldn't mind arresting her for his troubles. "So he didn't hurt you." His voice was flat.

A small laugh escaped her lips, dangerously close to a sob. "Hurt me?" she looked up at Keith and he could see she was biting the inside of her cheek.

"Dad, he's in the ICU."

--------------------------------------------

They wouldn't let her in the ICU. It was for family members only, the doctor told her. Veronica, very reasonably she thought, pointed out that as Logan had no family this meant no visitors at all, but instead of responding to her well-thought-out argument, Dr. Michaels suggested she go to the bathroom and take a break. Veronica stared at herself in the bathroom mirror for a long time. She hadn't realized she'd been crying. What was she crying for, anyway? Lost opportunities. Lingering glances in the hallways. Locker conversations that always left her feeling a little breathless and giddy, even when she hated him. The way his hands closed, oh so tentatively, around her waist at the dance...

Did he really try to kill himself?

Could she have stopped him?

A half hour and several splashes of cold water later, she had gathered herself enough to leave the bathroom. Almost immediately she heard some kind of ruckus coming from the reception area. She recognized the shouting voice with a sigh--honestly, why couldn't Sheriff Lamb just do the world a favor and jump off a cliff?--and walked slowly down the hall.

It took a while to sort everything out. Her voice during all of the explanations and apologies surprised her and made her distantly proud. It was steady, calm. Only the slightest occasional tremor betrayed the fact that Logan's presence on the other side of the hospital--where she didn't even know if he was _still alive_--was like a vicious parasite gnawing through her insides. It might get better if she could just sit by him, look at his face, but then again, when had she ever gotten what she wanted? That's Neptune for you, baby--just eat shit and smile.

Her father touched her shoulder, gently, when she was finished. He had such a look of concern on his face it was all she could do not to break down right in front of him.

Wallace just leaned back in the plastic chair and let out a disbelieving sigh. "Antifreeze? Damn, that's intense. What's so wrong with sleeping pills? Or a good old-fashioned bullet?"

Veronica froze, her mind catching like a burr on the image of Logan deliberately putting a gun to his head.

"Shit, Veronica, I'm sorry...I didn't mean--"

Wallace cut off his embarrassed apology when Veronica abruptly stood up. "I'm going to get some food from the cafeteria," she said, aware that her voice was painfully faux-perky and unable to do anything about it. "Do you want anything?"

Her father and Wallace shook their heads. She got the impression that her father was surprised; he had wanted to take her home.

"It's going to be a long night," she said deliberately. "You don't have to stick around. I'll call if something comes up, I promise."

Wallace's jaw set and her father just laced his fingers behind his head. "I think these chairs are pretty darn comfortable. Don't you, Wallace?"

Wallace grinned. "Oh, absolutely Mr. Mars. I could sit here all night."

She couldn't help but smile. The ones she loved were always worth it.

--------------------------------------------

"Okay, that's it, Nurse Starchild officially needs her phone confiscated. I'm going to complain to the management."

"About what? That we couldn't sneak into an ICU patient's room because one of the nurses was doing her sister's horoscope?"

Wallace looked around the corner again to glower at the nurse, whose massive sun and moon earrings were clicking against the cell phone. This late at night, she was the only staff member in this section of the ward, but she might as well have been a dragon for all they were getting past her.

"Actually," Wallace said, "I think she finished the star charts. Now it sounds more like...you know, that Chinese shit. 'If you place your ass at ten degrees north with a jade cylinder...'"

Veronica couldn't help but crack a smile. "Feng shui, Wallace."

He raised his eyebrows. "What I said."

"Hmm...do you think if we told her the magnetic poles were re-aligning she would rush home to change her mandalas?"

"Nah, she'd probably just call up her extended family."

Veronica sidled past Wallace to peer around the corner. Nurse Starchild was leaning on the wall across from Logan's door, fiddling with her dream catcher charm bracelet.

"And girl, you would not believe how happy Henry is since I bought that copper sea serpent for the bathroom...that man's bowels are so regular now he whistles when he has to go."

"Oh god, did I just hear that?"

Wallace mimed a gag. "Man, that's some serious TMI."

"I don't know...she's a nurse. A nurse's entire job description is TMI. She probably puts her bowel movements on her livejournal."

Veronica reached into her pocket and pulled out her cell phone. She dialed half a number, looked around the corner and then dialed the rest. As the phone rang, she walked farther down the hall, away from the nurse and Wallace followed her.

"Gotta say, though," she said, as the phone rang, "those are some pretty nifty earrings."

Wallace stared at her like she'd lost her mind. "Who're you calling?"

She just put her finger to her lips. God, how she loved action.

"Hello, who is this?" The accent was Caribbean--a little thicker than Nurse Starchild's but the voices bore a lot in common.

"Hello, this is your cell phone services identity theft division. Am I speaking with the owner of this phone?"

"Veronica," Wallace whispered, "what the hell kind of accent is that?"

She frowned and made a shooing motion with her hand. "Yes, ma'am, we have identified some anomalies on your bill. It seems you have gone significantly over your monthly minutes, about three hundred extra so far this billing period, and we were concerned that this might be evidence of identity theft?"

The woman seemed appropriately concerned. "Oh lord! Three hundred...God almighty, are you sure?"

"Quite sure, ma'am. We see a number of these calls were made to...Neptune General Hospital...is that familiar to you? We just need to inform you that each extra minute is a one dollar fee."

"One dollar! Lord, love, let me call you folks back, alright? I got to get off the phone with my sister..."

Veronica's end went dead and she put the phone back in her pocket. Wallace was leaning against the opposite wall, staring at her with his arms crossed.

"That, my dear Wallace, is how it gets done." He continued to frown at her, so she sighed. "All right, my best outsourced-Indian telephone company grunt worker impersonation."

"It sorta sucked."

Veronica shrugged and scrunched her nose a little. "It might need some fine tuning."

She walked back to the corner where Nurse Starchild had been chatting for the last hour to see that, thank goodness, she had finally put away her cell phone.

"How did you figure out her sister's number, anyway?" Wallace whispered over her shoulder.

Veronica smiled. She got more of a kick than was probably healthy out of being clever. "Starchild's earrings. That moon is so big it reflected the screen on her cell phone. I read the number she was talking to backwards."

Wallace had the grace to look impressed. "So how are we gonna get in there, Encyclopedia?"

Veronica focused on the hall for a moment. Still no doctors around, and there hadn't been for at least the last two hours. They also hadn't pulled out the body bags yet, so that had to be a good sign. She hoped, anyway. No way to know for sure until she saw him, and the stress of it was increasingly difficult to deal with. The nurse was poking her head into all the rooms in the hall. She didn't pause over Logan, which Veronica chose to interpret positively. Unfortunately, she was also heading quickly to their corner, which meant they didn't have very much time.

Veronica nudged Wallace. "Go talk to her."

"Oh no. You think I want my colon realigned? No way."

"Just distract her Wallace, please? I've got to get in that room."

They were just whispering, but of course Wallace heard the desperation in her voice. She was nearly cracking with the stress, and he knew it.

He touched her elbow gently. "Okay. For as long as you need it."

"Hey, excuse me ma'am, but I'm trying to find the bathroom?"

The nurse was startled. "Sir, if you go back to the visitor's--"

Wallace rolled his eyes, but so slightly only Veronica noticed. "You know, I tried, but it's so hard to find a positive energy bathroom in this hospital, isn't it? This is the only section where the chakras really feel properly aligned!"

Veronica had to cover her mouth to muffle her surprised laughter. As their voices receded, she realized that Wallace had never told her everything was going to be okay.

And she was very grateful that she had friends who knew when to eschew the bullshit.

--------------------------------------------

Well, did Logan count as a friend? He counted as alive at least, which was a relief too great to allow for rational thought for at least five mutes. She just sat in the chair beside his bed and anticipated heartbeats. His and hers, beating beautifully out of sync. Her heart wouldn't slow down enough to match his. It sped along nearly twice as fast, propelled by nerves and fear and anger.

"Jesus Logan, you look terrible, you know that?" she whispered. His face was ashen, his eyes were red rimmed with deep purple shadows beneath. He had a breathing tube in his throat and what seemed like a dozen probes and IVs trailing from his body.

So, did he do it to himself? Had he attempted to shake off his mortal coil and just ended up tangled in it? But with _antifreeze_? Surely among the many benefits of wealth was having your pick of less painful suicide methods.

"I mean, this is Southern California. Can you even _buy_ antifreeze here?"

She almost expected to hear him give some witty rejoinder, despite the tube down his throat and the coma. A few seconds of expectant waiting, and then she started crying.

Just a little.

"It's going to be okay," she told herself, because no one else would.

She leaned back in her chair, stared bleakly at him.

"Ah, nothing like the smell of bullshit in the morning."

It was his voice, but she knew she was asleep.

--------------------------------------------

Doctor Michaels woke her in the morning. Veronica burbled awake with some incoherent excuse on her lips, but the doctor just smiled and handed her a tissue.

Veronica stared at it, cluelessly. Logan was still alive--she heard his heartbeat.

"You've got a bit of drool," she said, gesturing helpfully to her face.

Veronica grimaced and wiped her mouth. "I'm really sorry," she said, when she finished, "I just couldn't stand being out there, not knowing--"

She smiled. "I understand. I don't...endorse it, but I understand. Now why don't you let me finish my checkup on Logan while you wait outside, okay?"

Of course she wanted to stay, but she could hardly refuse the person who had just given her a get out of jail free card for breaking a big hospital rule red-handed, so she meekly shuffled out into the hallway.

It was much busier now than it had been a few hours ago, and no one paid her much attention when she found a nearby bench and sat down. Still alive the next morning. That had to be good, right?

The doctor came out fifteen minutes later.

"Okay," Veronica said as she sat down beside her, "no overt frowns, no body bags...tell me something good?"

Dr. Michaels put her hand over Veronica's nervously twitching one, which just annoyed her. She didn't need to be coddled. She'd handled worse, for god's sake.

"He's doing much better," she said. "Not great, but much better. I think he's out of danger for the short term."

Veronica shuddered. She couldn't help it. "Short term?"

"I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but our initial tests show that his kidneys have failed almost completely, and what limited function they have now will give out soon. Even with dialysis, he'll only live a few years without a kidney, given how much his body has already taken from the poison."

Veronica laughed, only a little hysterically, but still several of the nurses stopped to stare at her. "A kidney, that's all? Well, lucky him, that's what money's for, right?" She lowered her voice faux-confidentially. "He's got lots of it. How much do you have to pay to get a kidney 'round these parts, anyway?"

The doctor looked mildly offended. "No hospital in this country lets rich patients pay for their organs, Veronica. He'll have to go on the list like everyone else."

Of course. She knew that...too bad the real world couldn't be more like General Hospital. "So, where on the list will he be, exactly?" She asked, far more contritely.

The doctor glanced away and her left hand began to fiddle with the cross she kept around her neck. It didn't take much of her Dad's training for Veronica to deduce nervousness.

"Near the top, actually," she said. "But in his case, I doubt it's going to help."

Veronica's voice was just as quiet. "Why not?"

"His antibody levels are incredibly high. His blood type, his tissues...finding a match for him will be very difficult. Also, he's on the list now, but I have to tell you the fact that there's a good chance this is suicide makes him a risky candidate. They might pull him even if we find a suitable donor in time."

Veronica's voice was rough, like someone who suddenly had trouble breathing. "He didn't attempt suicide."

"I know you don't like the idea, but what else could it have been?"

She shook her head, perhaps a bit too forcefully. "I don't know. Why don't you ask _him_?"

"No guarantee he'd tell me the truth, if he knew what was at stake. And we aren't going to wake him up for the next few days, at least."

Veronica nodded slowly. She was too groggy and this was too important. "But for now, he's on the list, right?"

Michaels nodded. "In his situation, you know, a related donor is usually the best bet. You're certain he has no living family?"

Veronica had a sudden flash of Aaron's face reflected in her rearview mirror as she swerved desperately off the road.

"No one worth bothering," she said.

--------------------------------------------

Her father took her home after that. He insisted that she sleep, and she was too drained to protest.

"So, about Logan," he said, awkwardly, when they entered the apartment. Her body stiffened--she didn't want to talk about it.

"Why didn't you tell me you were...seeing each other again?"

She almost choked on her saliva. "Gee, Dad, you really know how to cap a great day, don't you?" She glared at him, but he just looked at her evenly. She knew that look. He was trying to read her the way he read his suspects and bail-jumpers.

"So you aren't going out?"

What was that phrase Logan had used just yesterday? Oh, yes. "I'd rather date a hissing cockroach."

He looked confused. "Then why...?"

"What, you think I should give all my ex-boyfriends the Duncan Kane treatment?" Never mind that that had pretty much been her method of dealing all school year. "Logan and I sometimes talk. He fainted in front of me, I took him to the hospital. Nothing more to it than that."

Of course he didn't believe her. Nothing more to it? Nothing more than turning into sobbing, nervous wreck by his hospital bed like some two-bit daytime soap actress. She could hear the Emmy moment now: "I'm sorry Logan, so sorry! I've loved you all this time, don't you know?"

Dear god, she needed some fucking sleep.

Her father plopped a jar of Ben & Jerry's on the table with two spoons.

"Chunky Monkey?"

Gotta love a man who knows when to change the subject.

She smiled at him. "It'll do."

--------------------------------------------

Kendall Casablancas, it must be said, was a woman of regular and orderly habits. Almost Victorian, if you think about it--which Veronica did, on the way to Seabreeze Gym for Aging Trophy Wives and Their Socialite Peers (as she liked to call it). Kendall as a Victorian? An image of almost perfect hilarity.

She winked at the boy behind the front desk as she went into the changing room. He just blushed and didn't ask for ID.

Inside, Kendall was riding an elliptical machine like it was a horse and she was escaping the barbarian horde.

Or like...Veronica rolled her eyes. "So that's what he sees in her."

She walked up behind Kendall, edging aside another woman who was very impatiently waiting for one of the elliptical machines to free up.

"I'm next, just so you know," the woman said pointedly, somehow managing to express disdain for Veronica's year-old sneakers and worn spandex in the same breath. "Her hour's almost up."

Veronica shrugged and then nonchalantly yanked Kendall's earbuds out.

Kendall gasped with such predictable outrage that Veronica had to smile. "What the--oh, it's you. What is it this time? More waxy ear problems?"

Veronica raised her eyebrows. "Different boyfriend. And not so much waxy ear problems as almost dying problems."

Kendall stared at her. "What are you talking about? Think you can give those back to me, now? The last five minutes burn the most fat."

"Logan's in the hospital," she said--loudly, because it made her sound more nonchalant. "I'm curious about who put him there."

Kendall's frantic pace slackened slightly. Veronica put the earbuds back in her hand.

"Meet me in the changing room in five minutes," she said.

Kendall found her sitting on one of the benches by the showers.

"This had better be good, Veronica. I've got to meet my trainer in six minutes."

Veronica laced her hands behind her head and regarded Kendall carefully. This would be important.

"So, Logan almost died last night. Antifreeze. No one knows how it happened."

"Why don't you ask him?"

"In a coma."

Kendall winced--slightly, but it was there. Feelings from the she-bitch? Who knew? "Antifreeze? That's not an accident."

Something about her voice when she said that--an undertone of calculating intelligence, like she had considered situations like this before--made Veronica's ears perk.

"No, it isn't. Which is why I'm talking to you. Eliminating possibilities."

"You think I poisoned him?"

The thought hadn't even occurred to her, actually, but she hid her surprise. "Not really, but that's not the possibility I'm eliminating at the moment."

Kendall paused and then seemed to realize something. "You think he...what would I know about that?"

"You've spent a lot of time with him, these past few months. Did he ever say anything to you? Did you ever get the impression he was thinking about it?"

Kendall laughed. "Veronica, don't overestimate. We weren't sharing deep thoughts. We aren't in love. It was just fucking."

"Even fuck-buddies talk."

"What would you know about it?"

Veronica couldn't really think of a response, so she just waited. Finally, Kendall sighed.

"Listen, there was nothing. Logan isn't big on the fuzzy talk either, you know. He seemed fine."

"Happy?"

"How would I know? Not suicidal, that's for sure."

Veronica leaned against the wall. Her temples were throbbing and it wasn't even four. "Had anything made him upset lately? And by upset, I mean angry, more brittle. Extra helpings of sarcasm."

Kendall's smile was tight and a little impressed. "Only time he got like that was after seeing you. And I haven't seen him lately. I think he thinks he's broken up with me."

"He _thinks_..."

Kendall stood and picked up her Gucci sports bag. "Guys like him always come back."

--------------------------------------------

Finding Dick took some legwork. He wasn't at home, according to Beaver/Cassidy, who didn't know where the jerk was and did he look like a babysitter? He wasn't at the beach--the waves were too small--but he _was _at an impromptu party of Luke's involving beer, violent playstation games and a few confused female exchange students. Not exactly Victorian, but Dick was pretty predictable.

Veronica dragged him out of the party literally by the ear--he was drunk enough to let her.

"That hurt, bitch," he said, once she had let go of him on the porch. His drunkenness made the curse sound almost like an endearment.

"I'll write you a note."

He peered up at her, hand on his red ear. "Hmm...do you want me Ronnie? Luke's parent's aren't home. We could use their room."

"As appealing as that offer is Dick...I just want you for your brains."

"Huh?"

"You know, my thoughts exactly. So, let's get to the point--has Logan been acting strange lately?"

Dick took a moment to ponder this. It looked like he had already had several hours of determined drinking behind him. Good thing she hadn't found him any later--he might have been incoherent. Well, more than usual.

"You mean, besides not showing up at school today and ditching this rad party"  
"Yeah, besides that."

She knew that if she told Dick Logan was in the hospital, it would be all over the school by first period, and for a number of reasons she wanted to delay public knowledge of this as long as possible.

Dick giggled. "Well," he said, swaying, "he's not still hung up on _you_, if that's what you mean."

Veronica's whole body froze, but she knew Dick wouldn't notice. It was the peculiar stress of the last sentence that did it.

"So, who is he hung up on?"

Dick shrugged and chugged the rest of his beer. "Fuck if I know. Don't ask, don't tell, right? Only we're not gay. Probably some blonde skinny _not_-Veronica-Mars chick, if I know Logan. Unattainable. He loves that."

Veronica had no idea what to make of that. "So...has he been depressed lately?"

Dick snorted. "No fucking way. He's a party animal. Until today, anyway."

She rolled her eyes. "Drinking a lot?"

"Definitely. Hey, you want a beer?"

"No thanks. So, more than usual?"

He shrugged. "Dude likes to drink. Hey, Ronnie, what's with the twenty-questions? You two thinking of getting married or something?"

Now Veronica almost wished she'd taken the beer. "N-not really."

"Cause he'd come running if you did. You have that dude seriously pussy--" He mimed cracking a whip.

"I thought you just said he wasn't hung up--"

"Hey, I said I don't ask. Doesn't mean I'm blind." He levered himself up off the railing and walked over to her.

"So, can I go? Unless you want to boogie upstairs...?"

"Not in a million years...but thanks."

He shrugged. "If you see him, let him know he's missing a great party."

Veronica looked back inside. One of Luke's friends was lining up some coke on the glass coffee table, and the girls were eyeing it like they'd never seen so much pure powder in one place before. Who would score, who would make an ass of themselves, who would wake up the next morning and wish they remembered what the hell they did. And worse things...yeah, Veronica remembered these parties.

But she didn't feel a twinge when Luke led her out without even a perfunctory invitation. This was one part of her old life she would never miss.

--------------------------------------------

That evening, she poked listlessly at the manicotti her dad had picked up from Marco's, their favorite corner Italian.

"Oh, come on, don't tell me even manicotti can't cheer you up."

She looked across the table at him and attempted to smile. "Sorry. I'm just a little distracted today. Why don't you eat mine?"

Keith tried to look offended. "Who do I look like, Backup?"

"Oh, come on, you've been eying my plate for the last ten minutes."

"I have not! Okay...maybe a little."

She pushed her plate towards him. "Go ahead, eat it. I don't have much of an appetite."

Keith gave her his patented 'Daddy's worried' look, which was only slightly marred by his stuffed cheeks.

"Do you want to tell me about it, honey?" he said, after he had swallowed.

She sighed. "I don't think Logan did this to himself."

"That's good, right? That means he can stay on the transplant list."

"But I have no proof, and it's still possible, and if I'm right it means that someone else tried to kill him. You don't eat antifreeze in Southern California by accident, Dad."

Keith put down his fork, food demolished. "No, I guess you don't. He wasn't noticeably strange or depressed? You asked his friends?"

Friends? All whopping one of them. One whose entire set of shared interests were drinking, playstation and pot. And a fuck buddy. _Fuck, when did this happen to us, Logan?_ She thought. _We used to have friends who loved us. And then Lilly died and Duncan left and where are we now? At least I have Wallace and my Dad. You..._

If she was going to be honest with herself, she realized, Lilly's death ruined all of their lives. But it ruined Logan's infinitely more.

--------------------------------------------

Veronica woke up early by dint of sheer willpower and drove to the hospital before school. Dr. Michaels wasn't there, but the receptionist paged the physician who was monitoring Logan's condition. He was a slender Asian man in his late forties who looked more than a little annoyed at being called to the waiting room.

"Yes, may I help you, miss?"

Veronica was suddenly nervous. This man didn't look like he would be nearly as sympathetic as Dr. Michaels. "I came to check on Logan Echolls' condition? I was the one who brought him into the hospital. Also, I have some information concerning some worries Dr. Michaels had about his placement on the transplant list. I'm...I'm positive he didn't try to kill himself. Someone did this to him."

The doctor raised his eyebrows. "That's an interesting thing to say. Do you have any idea who?"

"No, not yet. But I'll find out."

He smirked. "Well, we'll find out one way or another when we revive Mr. Echolls this afternoon. If he was poisoned, hopefully the young man himself will be able to tell us who did it."

Veronica glanced at her watch. "I have to be at school soon, but could I just come in and see him for a few minutes?"

The doctor hesitated but another, broader man she hadn't noticed behind him stepped forward and put a spidery hand on the doctor's shoulder.

"We appreciate your concern, but I'm afraid that won't be possible just now."

Veronica stared at him. He was tall--intimidatingly so. It seemed like he was nearly twice her size. His smile was Woody Goodman greasy, but with a bit of extra creepiness.

"My God," Veronica drawled, "do you and Lex Luthor have the same tailor? The resemblance is uncanny."

"Veronica Mars. I've heard of you, of course." He held out his hand, and after a few moments, awkwardness made her take it.

"It's not for sale," she said.

"What isn't, dear?"

"My soul." She deliberately extricated her hand and wiped it on her jeans. "You know, just wanted to get that out of the way. So, who the hell are you?"

"Ethan Lavoie, esquire."

"Fancy. Yet, relevant?"

His eyes narrowed and he smiled.

"I represent Aaron Echolls."

END Chapter Two

And hopefully, if you comment, Chapter Three won't take me quite as long (hint, hint)


	3. You Might As Well Live

Title: Bright, Chapter Three  
Author: Utsusemia (Lois Fogg)  
Pairing/Character: Logan/Veronica, ensemble  
Word Count: around 4,000  
Rating: R  
Summary: When Logan succumbs to a mysterious and possibly deadly illness, Veronica is determined to discover who is responsible...and why.  
Spoilers: After Plan B, but before I Am God

Notes: Look, I wrote another chapter! I promise to try to make my updates more regular in the future, but enjoy. More notes at the bottom.

Chapter Three: You Might As Well Live

She tried, very hard, to control the sudden frisson of fear that jutted up her spine at the mention of that name. But Mr. Ethan Lavoie esquire just smiled, and she knew he had seen it. The thought of Logan, unconscious on a hospital bed, with no one to stand between him and this...creature, made her feel almost nauseous.

She turned, a little desperately, to the doctor. "You can't--" her voice was hoarse, so she cleared her throat and tried again. "Listen, you can't leave Logan alone with him. He won't be safe." The doctor just stared at her like she'd lost her mind.

_God_, she thought, _maybe I have_. Logan almost died and she was probably the only one who cared enough to stop whoever it was from finishing the job. Veronica Mars, his ex-girlfriend and most bitter enemy. The irony of it was enough to make her choke.

The creature's laugh sounded like the illegitimate offspring of Laurence Welk and a walrus.

"Dear," he said, "you certainly have an active imagination, don't you? Then again, considering what baseless accusations you've leveled at my client, I suppose that shouldn't be a surprise."

"Hmm... baseless accusations like almost killing me and my father? Oh my mistake, he must have gotten those _third degree_ burns overheating the cheesy nachos."

"And yet there's no actual evidence my client had anything to do with your father's...unfortunate accident. Nothing but his word. And yours, of course. How very convenient."

Veronica felt like she had turned into a column of rage, but it was cold and hard and just a little brittle: the kind she liked the most. The kind she could use. "You're forgetting the man in the house. He saw Aaron, too."

She had thought it would be her trump card, but the creature's smile told her something had gone horribly wrong even before she made sense of his words. "Ah, I think you'll find it rather difficult to get that gentleman on the witness stand. He seems to have left town and given no forwarding address. I heard he came into an inheritance."

Veronica just stared. Aaron's lawyer was practically admitting in front of her that he had paid off the owner of the house. And they both knew there was nothing she could do about it.

The doctor finally seemed to put together their conversation. "Wait," he said, "you're dating the son of the man who tried to kill you?"

The creature frowned. "Allegedly."

Veronica's stomach lurched--entirely unnecessarily--at the word 'dating.'

"We're not ...listen, I just don't want to see him killed. His father is in prison for murdering my best friend and almost killing me. It's not safe."

"He is in custody, awaiting a trial which, may I remind you, has not been conducted yet. Or maybe you were out the day your teacher went over the constitution? His son is gravely ill. Surely you wouldn't stop a worried father from helping his only son?"

Veronica touched her face. "Oh, look! A tear. Do you know what your _concerned_ father did to Logan?"

Lavoie shrugged. "I can't imagine what you're implying. And it's a moot point, anyway. As far as the courts are concerned, dear, Mr. Echolls still has custody over his son, and as his representative, I am the only one authorized to make medical decisions. Which means, I think I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

_Just ignore him._ "Please," she said, quietly to the doctor, "please don't leave them alone together. Just keep him safe."

The doctor stared for a moment, and then shrugged. "I can keep a nurse nearby. The machines will tell us if anything is going wrong. I'm sorry, it's the best I can do."

Veronica took a deep, shaking breath. "Okay. Thank you."

She felt Lavoie's eyes trailing her as she walked out.

--------------------------------------------

Cliff sounded groggy, as though her call had woken him up.

"Jesus, Veronica? What time is it?"

"Seven thirty. Shouldn't you lawyer types be up by now?"

She heard sheets rustling and a possibly female murmur. "Late night. I presume you want a favor."

"I want to hire you, actually."

"Now that's interesting. But you forget I know your father. What are you going to pay me with? Jujubees?"

"Nah, I like snickerdoodles better."

"Tempting. Rolled in cocoa?"

"For you, Cliffy, anything."

"Ah, you're sweet. Tell you what, for you: ten snickerdoodles and one favor an hour."

"And the nature of this favor?"

"At my discretion. With you, I anticipate trouble."

"See, that's why I like you, Cliff, you're always prepared."

"And you're always so interesting. It's like watching fireworks going off in someone else's living room: dangerous, but fun at a distance."

Veronica grinned ruefully. "So, I have a problem. A lawyer type of problem."

"My specialty. What is it?"

"Ethan Lavoie."  
His sudden intake of breath was sharp on the phone. "That's some problem. How did you get mixed up with him?"

"He's representing Aaron Echolls."

"I'd heard that. But the trial is still at least a month away. Is he harassing you?"

"No, not exactly." She sighed. If Cliff was going to help her, she had to tell him, but it seemed so hard to say. Just asking for help revealed too many things. But not asking scared her much more.

"It's Logan."

"My favorite overentitled client. He got himself in trouble again? That kid has some self destructive streak."

"But this time...someone tried to poison him, he's in a coma, his kidneys have failed, and now Ethan Lavoie is making all the medical decisions because Logan's still a minor. I need him to go away."

Cliff whistled. "Veronica. You've outdone yourself. Custody law? I took a course a few years ago, but...you sure you don't want to get someone else?"

"Can I pay them in snickerdoodles?"

"Point taken. I don't suppose you have any dirt on Mr. Echolls' wonderful parenting skills?"

_Oh god._ She swallowed to coat her suddenly dry throat. "Just...go with the obvious stuff, for now. You know, the alleged murder and statutory rape. If that doesn't work...get back to me."

She could almost hear Cliff deciphering the meaning behind her words. "You should tell me what you know, Veronica."

She closed her eyes. "He'd never forgive me."

--------------------------------------------

Wallace was waiting for her in the parking lot. She thought she was maintaining pretty well when she told him--no redness left over from the stressed out crying break in the car, she checked--but he still knew. He squeezed her hand briefly and then offered her the rest of his box of Fiddle Faddle, and she had never loved him more than at that moment.

By the time she made it to last period, she was a mess. Rumor that something had happened to Logan was floating around the school, and everyone stared and whispered like they knew it had something to do with her. She called the hospital four times between classes to make sure that he was still alive. The last nurse took pity on her and gave her a few more details: his kidneys still weren't functioning, but he was well enough be taken off the coma drugs. He would be awake by tonight.

And she wouldn't be able to see him.

To distract herself from her possibly irrational terror of what Ethan Lavoie might do to him, she started a file on her laptop during study hall, labeled "Logan Echolls, attempted murder." It was weird, almost, how calming it felt to turn this situation into a simple case. Something to be solved, fixed, and put behind her.

"So, who are the suspects?" she muttered to herself. Wallace looked at her curiously, and then saw what she was doing.

"People who hate Logan?" he whispered.

Her smile was ironic, but genuine. "Good place to start."

_People who hate Logan_, she typed. And then, under that:

_Aaron Echolls  
Weevil?  
the rest of the PCHers with those weird names I can never remember  
most of the 09ers  
anyone who knows what he did to that pool  
anyone who listens to "Ahoy, Mateys"  
Butters  
Mr. Wu  
Van Clemmons  
Fitzpatricks  
Lamb_

Wallace shook his head. "I think you forgot Ms. Marple."

"No, it couldn't have been her, she was in the parlor with the candlestick."

Mr. Wu looked up from the book he was reading. "Veronica, Wallace, would you like to spend some extra quality time in detention? No? Then I suggest you refrain from having it now."

Veronica rolled her eyes and then turned back to the computer.

_what should I do? everyone hates him!_

Wallace checked to see if Mr. Wu was still looking, and then typed back.

_maybe not everyone. maybe you're overestimating_

_oh, and I forgot all about the bums. those bums must hate his guts. and Hannah. but I guess she isn't here anymore, so it doesn't really count. yay for proximity!_

_yeah. damn. how the hell does a dude get that many enemies? he's only 17. shit, don corleone had to wait til he was at least thirty to get that many enemies. you know what that means? your ex bf is a bigger badass than don fucking corleone. thats hardcore. im almost afraid to sit next to you. hes gonna whoop my ass._

_He's in a coma!_

_didnt stop the don, did it? man got shot five times. logan got poisoned. just watch, he'll walk outta there like nothing happened._

_And you're basing that on..._

_homey has too many enemies. you got that many enemies, you're too special to die like a normal person_

_He's your homey now? Don't answer that. Hey, Wu is leaving. Go watch the door, okay?_

Veronica stood up and looked around while Wallace went to make sure Mr. Wu was out of ear shot. This study hall seemed like a good cross section of people. Paint geeks, shop geeks, computer geeks, a few 09ers...

Well, it was worth a try.

"Hey, guys, can I take a quick poll?" Everyone turned to stare at her.

"So, uh...do you think you could raise your hand if you hate Logan Echolls?"

For a moment, no one moved, but then Weevil, lounging in the back row, laughed and raised his hand. "Dude's a punk. Everyone knows that."

A few seconds later, almost everyone in the room had raised their hand.

Right. Clearly she'd gone about this the wrong way. "Okay, maybe you could just raise your hand if you _like_ him?"

Gia, Madison and Jackie. And Madison looked embarrassed, which was a little disturbing. Too bad Dick didn't have study hall with them. It would have brought the count up to four, at least.

"Hey, Veronica, what's this for, anyway?" Gia asked, a little nervously.

"Navigator. Special feature on our most controversial students."

Madison grinned. "Wow Veronica, it must be pretty hard to report on yourself."

"Well, it was either that or get stuck doing students with obvious comebacks."

"Hey, Wu's almost here!"

At the sound of Wallace's warning, everyone quickly turned back around in their seats and acted suspiciously busy. Mr. Wu frowned at her for a second, but he went back to his desk without comment.

So everyone hates him. Where did that leave her?

She needed a timeline, but the only person who could give it to her was Logan. And the Devil's advocate wouldn't let her within thirty feet of his hospital bed.

_Hey bff. Did I ever tell you how much I appreciate your resourcefulness and flexibility?_

_what do you want, veronica?  
_

_I need to break into the hospital_

_man, how did i know you were going to say that?_

--------------------------------------------

Dinner that night was ice cream and fudge, accompanied by Seinfeld reruns. The ice cream helped her relax a little, but not enough. She was worn out, and she still had to find some way to talk to Logan. Preferably tonight, before Lavoie or anyone else did something to him.

"Hey, Dad," she said, when she had downed nearly half a tub of Ben & Jerry's. "Could you do me a favor?"  
He knew her well enough to look wary. "I hope it's legal?"

"Um...fuzzy, maybe?"

"Fuzzy. Is that a technical term?"

"Dad, I need help. This is...I don't know how else to do it."  
He sighed. "Okay. What is it?"

"I need a hospital badge. Something that will get me into his room."

"Veronica, I'm a former Sheriff, not a former hospital director. How could I get you a badge? _If_ I were going to do that, I mean."

She smiled. She always knew when she had him. "Oh, come on. You don't have any favors you could call in? Anyone at all connected to the hospital?"

He considered for a moment and then laughed. "Okay, but you're not going to like it."

--------------------------------------------

"Hey, I'm just happy I'm not the one in the gray jumpsuit. It's got too many associations."

Veronica rolled her eyes. "Oh yeah, you really understand prison life. Come on, Wallace, you're richer than I am!"

"Hey, I had a cousin who went to juvie."

"For what?"

He looked away. "Internet fraud."

Veronica patted him on the shoulder. "I think we're going to have to revoke your gangster card, Wallace."

"Shut up."

Veronica adjusted her black wig and the too-baggy janitor's suit her father had found for her. He was right about her not liking it, but as long as she got past Slimy Lavoie, she didn't really care.

She picked up the mop and wheel pail. "Call me if you see him or anyone else get near that hallway, okay?"

"Sure, don't worry, heard you the first five times. How scary can this lawyer be? You're acting like he's Shug Knight or something."

Veronica shivered. Jesus, she really was tired. "Just be careful. Don't let on that you know me."

"Hey, I got the lookout thing down, don't worry. Good luck," he said.

She nodded and quietly walked in through the service door.

--------------------------------------------

Visiting hours had ended for the night, so the halls were mostly empty. The few doctors and nurses she did pass looked straight by her, and she realized that a gray jumpsuit might not be very dignified, but it was private investigator gold. She went as quickly as she could to Logan's section, but it would look too suspicious if she didn't at least make a token pass at the floors.

"Okay, bright side?" she muttered to herself when her arms started to burn from exertion, "At least it's not toilets. Hospital bathroom toilets. Ugh, I'd need a hazmat suit."

Twenty minutes after entering the hospital, her phone was still silent, and she was a few yards away from Logan's door. There was a faint light coming from underneath, and she hoped that meant that he was awake and not that someone was with him. And since everyone hated him, that someone would probably be...

She had to get in that room, now. The floor nurse rounded the opposite corner, leaving her alone. Veronica dragged her bucket and mop to Logan's door and slipped inside. As she closed it, she realized that her wig had somehow gotten caught on the mop handle.

She gritted her teeth. "What a fucking great day." The synthetic hair was so matted around the wood that she almost knocked the bucket over when she pulled at it. She could feel her bobby pins coming loose and after a moment, she just yanked it the rest of the way off and tossed it down. It was supposed to land satisfyingly on the floor, but of course the hair was still wrapped around the mop, so it slid into the bucket, where it floated like a soapy, dead rat.

She stared at it for a moment, suddenly uncomfortably aware of Logan's incredulous gaze.

She sighed. "Did I really just do that?"

"Either that or I'm hallucinating." Logan's voice was rough--probably from the recently-removed breathing tube--but it was amused, carefully controlled. He didn't intend to give anything away.

She had to force herself to look up. She was too tired to control her face; she'd been so worried about him all day and she had no idea what he would see there. It was too dangerous to let him know...whatever it was she felt.

He looked terrible, no surprise. His face was too pale and a little yellow, which was only made worse by his puffy, red-rimmed eyes. Eyes that still, nevertheless, managed to pin her to the floor where she stood, and made her tremble with something she couldn't possibly name.

"H-hallucinating?" she said, after a searing moment. "Haven't you been doing that for a while? Or were those just regular delusions?"

He didn't even acknowledge her awkward retort, which made her feel transparent as cellophane beneath his considering, exhausted eyes.

"At the risk of hurting your fragile female ego, Veronica...you don't look so great. And I don't really mean the prison inmate chic you've got going...but nice concept."

She forcibly released her grip on the mop handle and walked a few steps closer. The room wasn't large--maybe a yard separated their bodies now, and as usual, she was painfully aware of every inch of distance.

"Hmm...pots and kettles?"

"_I_ almost died. Or so my father's lawyer helpfully informed me. And look: bedtime reading!" He picked up the book that was lying on the dresser by his bed.

"_1001 Alternatives to Teen Suicide_," she read. "Charming. Always trust Slimy Lavoie to give it that creepy, soulless touch."

His smile, as usual, told her more than she really wanted to know. He was still in a lot of pain--something about the way his lips seemed to twist more than usual. He was angry too, but she didn't know why. Or which reason in particular.

"I'd consider giving away my inheritance to know whose idea this was." He flipped to a page towards the end of the book. 'Alternative #753: Tell someone you love them.' Hmm...that one doesn't seem to work for me." He looked back up at her. "So, what's your excuse?"

Too many possible interpretations of that question, and none of them safe.

"For looking like Steve Buscemi's stunt double," he clarified. "Sleepless nights by my deathbed? Sorry I had to disappoint you."

His voice was so callous and accusatory that she had to stop herself from slapping him. Her hands were shaking with anger.

"Jesus, Logan. Do you have _any_ fucking clue? Call me a sap, but I really wouldn't be too happy if you died. Hell, I might just be the only one who would give a crap, so try not to antagonize me, okay? You can't do this from a fucking hospital bed."

She could see him consider that. "Do what, exactly?"

"I'm assuming you would choose a less painful method of checking yourself out?"

"Probably." He put the book back on the counter and winced. "Definitely. So, at least one person believes I wouldn't special-order an antifreeze cocktail. Which leaves..."

She had to say it. "Logan, do you have any idea who would do this to you?"

"Besides a certain lovely blonde ex who gives a mean impression of hating my guts? Not really."

"You're not exactly Mr. Popular."

His laugh was painful, in all senses of the word. "Comes with the whole 'not giving a crap' schtick."

Her phone beeped, which startled her so much she nearly fell into Logan's lap.

"Shit, it's Wallace." She quickly scanned the message:

_evil lawyer just walked in. talking to nurse. hurry up, girl._

"Okay, we don't have much time. Logan, tell me everything you did in the last twenty four hours before you got sick. And don't you dare leave anything out."

She took out a small reporter's notebook from her pocket and a pen.

"Wait, what's going on?"

"Your father's charming lawyer? Asserted custody rights over your still woefully underaged self, and barred me from talking to you. Yeah, he's right at the top of my suspect list."

For some reason, this seemed to shake him. "My _father_..."

Moments like these, when she could peek into the hell of Logan's life and see what it was doing to him--those were when she just wanted to weep. Everything between them was just so complicated and mixed up with endless layers of guilt--and now she had no time to deal with any of it. "Logan, we have to hurry."

A few moments later, he had recovered himself. "Day before...I woke up, went to school, classes. Oh, I smoked some pot with Dick in the parking lot during lunch. Emailed Hannah again...I'm really great at the futile gestures. More school. You bitched to me about something...stopped by the library--"

"Wait, you went to a library?"

"Oh, how she persists in thinking I can't read. A Bukowski short story collection that's out of print. But you can write down Bernstein Bears if that's easier to spell."

She rolled her eyes. "What next, Logan?"

"Kendall came over, practically raped me in the hallway, and then we got really drunk together. Well, I got really drunk. I can give more detail, if you'd like."

"No, that's okay. Anything else?"

"Passed out on bed, woke up with shitty headache, went to school...I think you were there for the rest. Nothing too pleasant."

Her phone beeped again.

_he's taking the elevator. get out now._

Veronica quickly ripped a sheet of paper from her notepad and gave it to Logan along with the pen.

"Write everything you ate for two days before you got sick on that. Who gave it to you, where you bought it, how much you ate."

She ran back to her mop and bucket. "Also, you don't have any objections to your dad losing custody, right?"

"Hoping that's a joke."

"Just wanted to check. I've got Cliff on it."

"You really ought to let me try those snickerdoodles one of these days."

She froze. He knew her too well.

His voice stopped her just as she was about to open the door.

"You know that Dorothy Parker poem? 'Razors pain you...'?"

She nodded.

"Thanks."

She kept her head down when she left.

--------------------------------------------

Just in time. Ethan Lavoie was rounding the corner as she left in the opposite direction. Too bad she had no idea how to get out of the hospital. She texted Wallace to let him know she was safe, and hung around mopping the same patch of floor while she waited for Lavoie and the nurse he had come with to leave. They weren't in Logan's room long: four minutes, maybe, before they emerged into the hallway again.

Surreptitiously, Veronica edged closer, cursing the shitty luck that had turned her wig into a mop. Hopefully Lavoie wouldn't be able to recognize her from behind.

"I thought you should know," the nurse was saying. "There were traces on his clothes, too. Crystal meth is made with household items, like antifreeze. Sometimes the poisonous chemicals aren't entirely removed."

"Had he taken a lot?" The false concern in his voice grated like sandpaper.

"Well...the levels were low. But there's no way to be sure. His body had probably metabolized a lot already."

They continued walking down the hall, past earshot. She couldn't have followed them, anyway. Fucking surprise, Logan had lied to her. _Crystal meth_. What an idiot. Why did she always want to believe in him, when every rational thought told her to stay away? What about him made her act like this?

Suddenly, the rest of that Dorothy Parker poem occurred to her:

Razors pain you;  
Rivers are damp;  
Acids stain you;  
And drugs cause cramp;  
Guns aren't lawful;  
Nooses give;  
Gas smells awful;  
You might as well live.

She was shocked to find that her cheeks were wet. Was it really so hard for him to want to live? But his voice when she told him that she suspected his father...could she really blame him?

Yes. Oh, yes she fucking could.

END Chapter Three

More notes: Okay, wow, I really want to thank everyone who read Nightfall and commented on it. I don't think anything I've written has ever gotten quite that response, and it made me really happy.

Also, you can speculate all you want about whodunit, but I ain't sayin nothin. All comments very much appreciated!


	4. Clean Hands

Title: Bright, Chapter Four (Clean Hands)  
Author: Lois Fogg (Utsusemia on LJ)  
Pairing/Character: Logan/Veronica, ensemble  
Word Count: about 7,500  
Rating: R (for language)  
Summary: Logan's been poisoned, and everyone's a suspect  
Spoilers: Post Plan B (2.17) AU  
Warnings: A bunch of cursing

Author's note (more at the bottom): Sorry this took so long. Hopefully, you're still interested…

Chapter Four: Clean Hands

Shit, Logan had discovered, came in distinct flavors. For example, there was the aching, raw kind, sour and acrid as a rancid cranberry. That particular variety belonged, in its purest form, to his father. Sometimes shit could be bitter, and yes, occasionally sweet and heady and alcoholic like the hiballs his mother drowned herself in. Veronica filled his mouth like that, only with a sharp, burning aftertaste--helpless fury, maybe, and not a little self-pity, because everything was already so fucking awful and she couldn't even _try_ to trust him.

Oh, Veronica's brand of bitter wasn't even close to quinine. Though he'd never actually tasted it, he suspected hers was far closer to ethylene glycol. A handy household product for use in car engines, smart-mouthed teenagers you want dead and crystal meth he never actually took, but is in his blood anyway.

Sometimes, of course, shit is just shit, which is the kind of thing you think when a barrage of tests where dignity means only _partial_ nudity in front of strangers (as if it mattered; it wasn't like the hospital robe hid the fucking scars) has just confirmed that neither of your kidneys are working and probably won't manage to again. He asked the nurse, without a hint of sarcasm for once, when she thought he could get a transplant. She had been the nicest of all of them, but she wouldn't meet his eyes and muttered something about 'hospital bureaucracy' before practically running out. A friendly visit from his resident lawyer/hell guardian clarified matters admirably:

"They have very strict rules here, Logan. I'm sorry, but no hospital in the country would put an attempted suicide and hard drug user on a transplant list."

_Attempted suicide and hard drug user_. Was that what she thought of him? The machine they hooked him up to, in lieu of an actual, functioning bodily organ, only sucked away one kind of shit, and left him feeling worse than before. He watched the blood flow into the machine and thought of all the better ways there were to die.

He wondered who thought he deserved this.

Besides Veronica, of course.

The list was crumpled, but he had smoothed it out as best he could. "Should have tried razors," he'd written in his atypically careful handwriting at the bottom of the list. He had thought it would make her smile, but he must have lost that power a long time ago.

Bitter like antifreeze, like poison--and familiar, like disappointment.

----------------------

Her hands tingled, her stomach cramped and her vision seemed to wobble every time she recalled the look on his face when she threw back his list. He was so shocked. _Too_ shocked, a part of her thought, but she couldn't allow herself to believe that. Not after what she had done. And when had she ever come out ahead by giving Logan the benefit of the doubt?

His kidneys were shot. He had to go on dialysis. That would make anybody seem pitiable. But let someone else, some other pliable girl with a weakness for dangerous and self-destructive men, pity him. She washed her hands, and she would keep them fucking spotless from now on.

"Veronica, you planning on murdering that locker? Cause I can get out of your way."

Carefully, Veronica put away her books and closed the door. The smile she turned on Wallace as they walked down the hall was fierce enough to make her jaw ache. He backed up a few steps and held up his hands.

"Hey, sorry I said anything. Bad day?"

"Tragic understatement."

"Yeah. That smile is scary."

"You should meet Mr. Sparky."

Wallace raised his eyebrows as he opened the door to the dining tables. "Threatening to beat me up _and_ you've named your taser? What's happened to Logan now?"

They sat down at an empty table and Veronica stared at her fruit salad and cottage cheese like it was a dead cockroach. She didn't even bother picking up her fork. She wouldn't mind impaling someone on it, really, but eating seemed like too much work.

"Seriously," Wallace said, his mouth full of what looked like quite possibly the greasiest fried chicken in Neptune. "What's happened?"

"Nothing he didn't do to himself," she snapped. "I don't want to talk about it."

Wallace looked at her thoughtfully (though how he managed that with cheeks full of fried chicken was beyond her).

"He's not dead, right?"

She shook her head, and then stared at the table so maybe he wouldn't see the sudden terror she felt in the pit of her stomach.

"Dying?"

"Same as yesterday." And about how long could he expect to live without a kidney? Fuck, she couldn't even bear to look at the table now because just the sight of food nauseated her.

"Veronica..." Wallace looked worried, which almost made her laugh. "Logan is a badass. Don Corleone, remember? You knew that."

She clenched her hands and glared at him. "I didn't sign on for his fucking issues. You never change them, you know? They never change. So why do I always have to try?"

They were both silent while she attempted to regain control of her breathing, her too-frantically pounding heart.

"You never had to," Wallace said, finally. "But you did."

He didn't ask the question, but she heard it anyway: _Why?_

And goddamn it, she almost couldn't bear the answer. Thank god Wallace knew it.

"Want some chicken? Mama's special recipe."

"Your mom made this? Funny, she doesn't _look_ like Aunt Jemima..."

"Oh, now you have to try it. Unless you want me to yo mama your pasty ass all the way to Oklahoma."

She rolled her eyes, but dutifully took a small bite.

Wallace sat back in his chair, looking very pleased with himself. "Better than fruit salad, huh?"

She smiled. "Just a little."

----------------------

The female doctor--the nice one--came to his room that afternoon. He had made it up to Suicide Alternative # 263 (write a sestina) in what might be the national championships of masochism. In his defense, he didn't have anything else to do. And reading about how to dance a maypole was better than the alternative of brooding over Veronica. So, even though the presence of doctors in his room had, until this point, always preceded some really shitty news, he almost welcomed the distraction. If it was really bad, he could try out Alternative #20 (play charades with someone who makes you angry).

"So," Logan said, by way of preemption, "what marvelous news have you come to deliver? Am I addicted to crack now? No...I have to lose a limb? Oh, I got it--my dad's decided to donate my body to science a few months early to get it in this tax period."

The doctor (Michaels, maybe?) winced, but otherwise didn't react to his little display. Which was a shame, since it was one of the best he had managed for a while. Outside of Veronica's inspiring presence, anyway.

"Better than that, I hope," she said. "We're going to discharge you. You're stable, and I think it's safe to say you'd prefer to be anywhere but here?"

Logan closed his book. "Very safe."

She sighed and walked a few steps closer to the bed. "I'm sorry. I know it sounds...inadequate, but I am. For what it's worth, I fought for you. The board can reconsider your case in a year."

Logan's mouth twisted. "Reconsider me for meth I didn't take and a suicide I didn't try. Fuck, if I wasn't depressed before."

She shrugged, a little helplessly. "It was in your system. A lot of addicts have trouble admitting they have a problem..." She trailed off at what he could only assume was his nearly murderous expression. "But have it your way. I can't keep you here--you haven't had any withdrawal symptoms. Here's a list of dialysis centers in the area. Feel free to toss the other thing in the trash as soon as I leave."

He picked up the papers. Beneath the brochures of smiling pensioners and their nurses, emblazoned with inspiring headlines like: "Healthy Living with Kidney Failure", was a thick brochure for Narcotics Anonymous. He looked up, a bitter comment already wet on his lips, but her expression stopped him. She really did look sorry, and it was so different from the anger or faux concern he had dealt with recently that he couldn't lay into her. Whatever the hell had happened to him, it wasn't her fault.

"That girl who brought you in," she said, her hand on the door. "She's scared for you. People react to it differently, but she's terrified. I don't know her, but you should think about that. Maybe she deserves more than living with that fear."

And--very weird--he actually did think about it when the discharge nurse brought him his clothes and papers to sign. A few of them already had Lavoie's loopy signature scrawled across the bottom. Logan resisted the urge to scribble across them, since at the moment leaving the hospital was more important than all-consuming rage.

What he really thought about as he signed those papers and struggled not to feel exhausted was what Veronica said during the more coherent parts of her tirade that morning.

"You think that just because you don't give a shit about yourself no one else does, either. Well, guess what? Wish granted. I refuse to care about you anymore, Logan. I can't handle it. If you want to die, then die. But leave me out of it."

So he scared her. And he could still hate her a little for not trusting him while acknowledging that she should probably have stopped caring about him a long time ago. If he was going to be honest, wasn't it amazing that she ever had? It wasn't always his fault, the shit that happened to him, but it was often enough. She didn't want him, but she felt obligated in a way he didn't really understand. She deserved not to be scared anymore. He couldn't just pass off his baggage.

His cell phone had a little juice left, but he waited until he was finally outside the goddamn hospital to use it. He leaned against the sun warmed bricks and sucked in a deep breath like he would never smell the earth again. It was strange, since he'd never been very appreciative of the so-called 'simple pleasures' before. Debilitating illness really did warp perspective, apparently.

The number wasn't in his phone, but he knew it anyway.

"I hope there's a lot of blood, because I told you not to call me at work."

"I need a ride. And some help."

Weevil sighed and Logan heard a crashing sound, like he'd tossed a wrench to the floor. "Fucking surprise. Where are you?"

"Neptune general."

"You owe me, boy."

----------------------

She'd only been in the Navigator office five minutes when Corny sat next to her and casually snatched away the contact sheet she was looking at.

"Hey Ronnie," he said, eying the sheet of tiny prints like he'd never seen one before. Or like it giving him some groovy hallucinations. "How's it going?"

She tried to grab it back from him, but he casually avoided her reach. "I was doing great, oh, thirty seconds ago. What are you doing here, Corny? Since when do you do the Navigator?"

To Veronica's surprise, he enveloped her hands in his leaned forward.

"Now, Corny, maybe you need to ask Mommy again about personal space? I require at least two and a half feet."

"Are you doing okay?" he said, his voice low and eagerly concerned. "I heard about Logan. It totally sucks, man."

She tried not to reveal the physically painful jolt of fear that passed from her stomach straight up her spine, but it was pretty impossible with Corny so close to her and clearly refusing to budge. Jesus, she needed a damn holster for her taser, if school was going to be like this from now on. Perhaps shocking Corny would be a tad excessive, but oh how satisfying. Even more decadent than Wallace's mama's fried chicken.

"What have you heard?" she asked, when she was reasonably sure she could control her voice.

"Oh, everyone knows, Ronnie. You don't have to hide your sorrow, anymore."

Did he just say that? "Did you just say that?"

"We'll help you through this, Veronica."

"How _Little Women_ of you. But you might want to cut down on the brownies." Roughly she pulled her hand out from under his and pushed her chair back. Breathing now officially ten times easier.

He looked a little hurt, which would have made her laugh if she wasn't gripped with worry over whatever the hell rumor he had heard. "Just offering my support. I don't know if I could've taken watching a dude get mauled by a shark right in front of me. That's intense."

Okay, forget the taser. A crowbar would be more appropriate. Only, she needed to know who to use it on. "And who told you this...tragic story, Corny?"

He smiled and put down her contact sheet. Oh, you gotta love stoners. Their inability to sense irony was only second to their creativity in finding new ways to get high.

"Dick told me. Straight from the source."

Of course. She stood up and casually took the taser from her bag. "So, just out of curiosity, what exactly was _I_ doing while Son of Jaws got busy with my ex-boyfriend?"

"Dude, you don't remember? You waded in, zapped the sucker your ray gun, pulled his bleeding body from the water and held him while you waited for the chopper. It was like fucking Death of Superman." He shook his head. "I can't believe I even know you."

She smiled. "Neither can I." She slammed her hand down on the light table and Corny jumped. "So, where is he?"

"D-dick?"

"And not your own."

"Parking lot. Hey, Ronnie--"

But she was already stalking out of the room.

----------------------

Gia caught up with her in the hallway.

"Hey, is it true Logan had a surfing accident and you saved his life? That is so totally cool. Is he going to be okay? I can only imagine how, like, hard it must be, going to school, pretending everything is okay, when Logan is like, fighting for his life--"

Abruptly, Veronica stopped and whirled around. "Gia?"

"Yes?"

"Shut up."

Her eyes widened--shock, hurt, fear, Veronica didn't know. "Oh. Sorry."

She sounded like she might be sniffling when she walked back into the Navigator office, but Veronica was still too consumed with anger at Dick to bother chasing after her. Gia would be Gia, after all.

Dick was just closing his car door when Veronica finally found him. She didn't even bother to hide her taser this time. In fact, she greeted him with it, so that he held his hands up with a lazy grin when she backed him onto the side door.

"Assaulting an endangered species, rescuing an asshole, weeping over his body like Lois Lane--I'm just a triple threat aren't I?"

"Nice to see you, Veronica."

"It's a movie, right? Made for TV, starring Lisa Rinna? Only it was an anaconda, not an alligator, and Rinna's breasts are at least two sizes larger..." She put her hands on her hips. "Wait, is this your way of telling me I need a boob job?"

"Are you dating Logan again, or can I still be a jerk?"

She shrugged. "Jerk away."

"You're a total bitch."

"Why, thank you."

"So...can you put that thing down now? I've got class."

"Ooh, he doesn't like me so much he'd rather go to school. I'm flattered. But I don't see why I should care about a guy who spreads rumors about his best friend's hospital stay."

"So he _is_ there. I knew something was wrong."

Veronica bit her tongue hard enough to taste blood. Damn it, she hadn't meant to reveal anything. She had no doubt who Logan would blame if he came back to a school filled with rumors about him.

If he came back to school at all, that was.

Dick looked around, pulled a joint out of his pocket, and lit up. "Is he, like, at death's door? It wasn't really a shark, right? I thought that sounded fishy."

He winked at his own pun and Veronica rolled her eyes. "Why would I know anything?"

"Because you're a nosy bitch."

"And why the hell did you make up that rumor?"

Dick blew a big, white puff into her face. Great, now she was going to go back to class smelling like pot. Corny would never leave her alone.

"Didn't," he said, settling back against his car. "Heard it from someone."

The knot reasserted itself in her stomach. Something was wrong. "Who?"

"Not sure...the step whore asked if I knew what happened to him. Can't remember if she told me about the shark or Gia."

"_Gia_?"

"You know, likes mini skirts, hates ending sentences." He took another puff and looked meaningfully at her taser. "Come on, you can't shock me now. I'm high. It'd be like hitting a puppy."

She casually tossed it to her left hand and leaned in closer. "I _am_ a bitch. It's what they do."

Veronica turned around abruptly and started walking away.

"Hey, you didn't tell me--is he okay?"

She walked faster.

----------------------

Weevil pulled up twenty minutes later and leaned on the horn.

"Dude, you look like shit," he said, when Logan climbed in the passenger side. The thing about this car--it looked like it used to belong to a hustler named Shaft, but there was a lot of leg room. Way more than Veronica's, if he were comparing, which of course he wasn't.

"Really? Maybe _that's_ why I was in the hospital."

Weevil looked at him. "Sure you shouldn't go back there?"

Logan raised his eyebrows and stretched his hands above his head. "I can think of prison cells that sound more inviting."

At least Veronica would have a harder time finding him in one.

Weevil shrugged and they rode in silence for a while. He was exhausted already, but just being away from the damn hospital and his father's creepy lawyer made him feel a little better. Maybe this would work out. Maybe he could prove that someone did this to him and he wasn't a suicidal, meth-shooting, antifreeze swilling nut. And then maybe they would give him a kidney.

Well damn, wasn't he an optimist?

Weevil pulled into an empty parking lot and shut off the car.

"Are you going to tell me what's going on, or should I call Veronica?"

That made him sit up straight. "_Don't_."

Weevil cocked his head, curious. "Really? What, you think she can't take care of herself? _Mars_?"

"This is my mess. I don't want her to clean it up." She wouldn't, anyway.

"Fair enough. So what makes you think I will?"

He knew that was coming. If only his brain didn't feel like it was stuck in first gear. "I heard Lamb wouldn't arrest Thumper. I could help you frame him."

Weevil let out a short bark of laughter, like he couldn't stop himself, and turned his head away. Why was he grinning like that?

"Officer Fuckface finally changed his mind. But it's been taken care of."

Logan stared at Weevil's profile and contemplated that. He knew how angry Weevil had been. He thought he knew what he was capable of--wasn't that why he'd called him?

"Weevil, I need help. Someone who isn't afraid to...take care of things."

"Someone you aren't in love with?"

Logan didn't say anything. Weevil sighed and rubbed one of the tattoos on his forearm. "I want something upfront. Five grand for me, and you give my grandma the deed to her house. Then I'll help."

"Deal. Murder makes you greedy, huh, Weevil?"

Weevil slowly cracked the knuckles of his right hand. "No, _campadre_, revenge does. So tell me what pile of shit you're in now."

----------------------

She'd snuck in at six in the morning. He was still asleep, but the sound of her mop bucket smashing against the wall woke him up. He had seemed happy to see her--until she started yelling at him.

Last night she'd barely slept an hour, and it was getting to her--her body felt jittery with a hazy panic, and snippets of conversations kept playing in her head. Like Logan's rough, confused protests this morning: "I've never done meth in my life, Veronica. I swear."

Jesus. She hadn't believed him. Why should she? He'd lied to her before, and it was in his goddamn tests. Who could have rigged his tests? Easier to believe that he was lying. Easier than thinking he was at the center of some bizarre conspiracy.

But Dick's voice kept intruding: "The step whore asked if I knew what happened to him..." _Kendall_. And there, that was it, the puzzle piece that made what she had done to Logan this morning not a little horrifying.

Kendall had told her she hadn't seen Logan in weeks. That he was trying to break things off with her. But Logan said she'd been over to his place the night before he got sick. His exact words? Oh yes: "She practically raped me in the hallway."

Either Kendall was lying, or Logan was--but only one of them had almost died. The timing was too suspicious. She had been horribly, self-righteously wrong.

Madison was standing in her cheerleader uniform by the school entrance, flirting with Luke. "I heard he was totally high when it happened. Isn't meth, like, shark candy?"

Veronica glared at her, but before she could do anything (like, smashing her face in with her pom-poms), her phone rang. She sighed.

"Tell me this is Ed McMahon."

"Same suit, no giant check."

Well, at least she hadn't taken Cliff off the case. "Any news? The good kind?"

"Depends on how you look at it. We have a date. Next Monday, 8 am. I just love family court."

"That's good, right?"

Cliff sighed. "Well, it would be if we had a case. Lavoie is clogging up my phones, asking for witnesses and affidavits. He's already rounded up twenty character witnesses."

"Famous people?"

"It's like the guest list on Hollywood Squares. Veronica, you've got to give me something to work with."

"He almost murdered me. He killed my best friend. That isn't enough to work with?"

"Inadmissible. The trial's still pending."

"What about the tapes?"

"Veronica...those were destroyed. I thought you knew."

Her vision went momentarily blurry and she leaned against the rough brick wall. _Destroyed?_ "When? How did he do it? I thought they were locked in the precinct vault."

"It wasn't Echolls. I mean, it wasn't Aaron. Ask your father about it."

_It wasn't Aaron._ She balanced the phone on her shoulder and massaged her temples. _He_ saw the tapes. She could only imagine... "Oh god, _Logan_."

"Veronica? Are you--"

"You can still make a case. I've seen them, I'll testify. Aaron's slept around with practically every married woman in Neptune, surely one or two of them will get on the stand. Find his housekeepers, gardeners, anyone who can say what an asshole he is. He can't intimidate all of them."

Cliff was silent for a moment while Veronica struggled to control her breathing. He saw the tapes. "That's a lot of work for some snickerdoodles, Veronica."

"Please. Give me until tomorrow, and I'll help. I'll get people on the stand Monday if I have to drag them all in myself, okay? But please."

"Okay. Take care of yourself."

She stared at the phone for nearly a minute before she managed to lever herself up from the wall and walk back into the school. She headed straight for the bathroom--she felt like someone had dropped a bomb on her, and wanted to make sure she didn't look like it too. She almost reached into her bag for an "Out of Order" sign, like Logan would see it and meet her inside. Where they would...fight? Make out? Both at the same time?

"You always disappoint me," she said, this morning.

"You always want to be disappointed."

Fuck, she would not cry. That would really cap this spectacularly shitty day, now wouldn't it? She was wiping her eyes and biting her lip when she opened the door to the girl's room, but it turned out someone had beat her to the histrionics. She heard the weeping--wet, loud and almost painful--before she determined its source. The third bathroom stall. The one with the broken lock.

"Hey," she said loudly, "are you okay? Should I get the nurse?"

The sobbing got louder, but Veronica couldn't pick out any coherent words. What the hell was going on in there? She shrugged. "Hope you're decent."

She stared down at the girl on the toilet seat for a long moment.

"Gia?"

"Veronica," Gia whispered, barely intelligible through her tears, "I don't know what to do."

----------------------

"Crystal meth? Antifreeze? Who the hell hates you that much?"

Logan laced his hands behind his head. "A wealth of possibilities."

"Dude. Maybe you should skip town, join the witness protection program or something."

"What, and abandon my girl before I clear my name?"

"So, she's your girl now? I thought she hated you."

"It's complicated."

Weevil smiled. "She always is." He pulled his car into the Neptune Grand and stopped by the entrance. "Well, here's your rich-ass abode."

"_Abode_? And here I thought you stopped taking English in 9th grade."

"Nah, they just took me out of remedial with you. We can get started tomorrow. But you'd better sleep, man. Corpses aren't intimidating."

Logan opened the door and slowly stood up. "Not arguing."

He hadn't turned around, but the look on Weevil's face gave him about one second's warning.

Lamb jerked his arm back so hard he thought the concierge could hear the bones popping. Curses exploded from his lips and gave way to grunts when Lamb shoved him against the marble wall of the hotel.

"Jesus, what the hell are you doing?" he shouted, even though every word made him feel closer to hurling on the pavement.

"Knew I'd get you eventually," Lamb said in his ear. "I'll figure out where you stashed the rest, but I think this will do for now."

He held up a little plastic bag filled with powdered crystals. "Recognize this?"

Oh, shit. "That isn't mine, I swear."

Lamb shoved him in the squad car and Logan seriously considered vomiting on him. Too bad he couldn't be entirely sure of his aim.

"Then who put it under your pillow? The tooth fairy?" Lamb laughed at Logan's stricken expression. "Yeah, you're screwed. Too bad Daddy isn't around to help you out of this one, huh?"

Help him out? _Daddy_ might just be his number one suspect.

----------------------

Gia was trembling and rocking back and forth like a mental patient. She seemed even more out of it than usual, but Veronica didn't smell any drugs. Ones she would recognize, anyway.

Veronica knelt and gripped Gia's shaking hands. "What happened?"

"She knew. Said she would...I don't know how. Oh, god, I'm sorry. I didn't want to, I'm sorry." Her sobs echoed off the tile and made Veronica shudder. What the hell was this?

"Gia...what did you do? Why are you sorry?"

She was so focused on Logan lately that everything seemed to be about him, but this was probably just a coincidence. Gia was probably just upset that she'd forgotten to invite Veronica to her slumber party or something.

"I can't," she whispered, and her voice was filled with such genuine anguish that Veronica knew this--whatever it was--couldn't be trivial. Which left scary. "She'll...Veronica, I'm so sorry."

She buried her head on Veronica's shoulder. Awkwardly, she held her there and wondered what to do.

But she was spared the decision, because a few seconds later Ms. James burst into the bathroom like she suspected underage sex.

Veronica noted that she tensed when she saw her, and then wondered when she started seeing everyone as a suspect.

"Gia, honey," Ms. James said softly, "your dad is here. He can take you home now."

Gia nodded and stood up, holding the side of the stall for support. She gripped Veronica's hand very tightly, but wouldn't look at her as Ms. James led her away. Veronica knew she should follow them when they left the bathroom, but her head was pounding, and she had Gia's tears and snot all over her shoulder. Six hours of sleep in the last three days. No wonder she felt like she was slowly going insane.

What was Gia talking about?

She turned the tap on and rinsed her face in cold water.

"Remember when we made out in here?"

Her head shot up, heart pounding, but of course she was alone. Hallucinations. As if her life going to hell wasn't already enough.

"Is he going to be okay?"

Who knew? But was it possible Gia had seemed a bit overinvested when she asked her that question? Guilty, even?

Veronica raced out of the bathroom and down the hall. Woody Goodman was helping Gia into the back seat of his Beemer with Ms. James standing nearby, radiating concern.

Woody turned to face Vreonica and she wondered for about the hundredth time how anybody could possibly possess such an array of fake smiles. This one was from the "grateful for your help during this time of sorrow" file. It probably got a good workout during funerals, but in the current circumstance it seemed truly creepy.

"Veronica. Ms. James told me you found Gia. She's...been having a hard time lately. I can't tell you how much I appreciate you being there for her. You're a true friend."

Veronica swallowed. Considering she could probably count all of those on one hand, she doubted it. But damn if it didn't look like Gia needed _someone_.

"Mr. Goodman, is she okay? Can I do anything?"

The smile deepened, with an effect so creepy Veronica actually took a step back. "I appreciate the offer, Veronica, but sorry. I think Gia's going to need a little alone time for a while."

He nodded at Ms. James and then drove off.

"Veronica, are you okay?"

"Not really. No, there's nothing you can do."

----------------------

"So, you expect me to believe that two ounces of a highly toxic, illegal and dangerous narcotic ended up beneath the pillow of your _exclusive_ hotel room...by accident? Maybe it just spontaneously formed out of thin air? Or no, maybe one of the poor Hispanic maids happened to come by five hundred dollars of drugs and gave it to you as a present?"

Logan glowered at Lamb and wondered if he actually needed to pee. That would be the one good thing that had happened to him today, which was sort of funny.

"I told you," he said, his voice a masterpiece of controlled rage, "I don't know how it got there. Maybe someone planted it."

"Oh yeah, because you don't do a good enough job of screwing up on your own. You're a walking train wreck, Echolls. Anyone who hates you would just have to sit back and watch."

Lamb leaned back and grinned like he counted himself proudly in their number. Logan wanted to beat that grin off his face, but he was so fucking tired he could barely sit up in his chair. How long had he been there?

"I bet my prints are nowhere on it, right?" he said, trying a different tack.

Lamb shrugged, but his eyes darted sideways and Logan knew he was right. "That doesn't mean anything. We got an anonymous tip that you had thirty pounds of meth stashed up there. Thirty pounds--"

"Which you didn't find. So what am I still doing here?"

"So you hid it. We'll trace it. I've got Sacks on it right now. A big drug dealer like yourself would be smart enough to wear gloves when handling his merchandise."

Logan rolled his eyes. "So, according to you, I'm such a big king pin that I can import enough meth to keep San Quentin fucking jolly for a month, but I can't be bothered to pay for, I don't know, a fucking _warehouse_ someplace I _don't_ live, and I can't find a better hiding place for a two-ounce bag than under my _pillow_? Who the hell am I, Doctor Claw? Dude, you're a criminal's dream."

Lamb slammed his fist on the table and leaned forward. He had the IQ of an iguana and the morals of a shark, but Logan had to admit he had one fucking impressive intimidating stare. "Not yours, Echolls."

"And that ought to tell you something."

----------------------

She had to talk to Logan. There were too many things she needed to do, but that one glared out at her like a neon sign. It had been too easy, she realized, to back away from the terrifying idea that someone had tried to kill him. Logan in self-destruct mode was painful, but more manageable than...whatever this was. As usual, she knew far more about what _wasn't_ the truth than what was. For example, Logan didn't try to kill himself, he didn't take crystal meth. Someone _was_ trying to kill him. But the who, the why...she had no idea. Gia's blowout tonight could have nothing or everything to do with it, and she hated her ignorance. She was so tired she had started dreaming between blinks, but she didn't even consider going to sleep. Whatever else she had to do, she needed Logan.

He tried to give her the list, she remembered. And she threw it back at him.

Her father's call caught her at a stop light halfway to the hospital, which was good, because she realized she was close to tears again--out of fear, exhaustion, guilt or who the fuck knew anymore.

"Dad? Do you need help? I thought you were on a stakeout."

"I am, sweetie," her father's voice was low, but she could still hear the concern in it.

"So, what's up?" she said, as faux-cheery as she could manage. Her dad would see through it, but the attempt usually comforted both of them.

"I just turned on my police radio," he said. Ah yes, the one he had not-so-legally kept after being ousted from the Sheriff's office.

"What did you hear?" She braced herself on principle. Since nothing could possibly go right, she might as well be prepared.

"Sweetie...it looks like Lamb picked Logan up a few hours ago. Some anonymous tip. Drug possession."

"Picked him up? What the hell did he do, drag him from his hospital bed?"

"I think he got discharged. Listen, we'll talk when I get home. I think one of the neighbors is noticing me."

He hung up and Veronica stared dully at her dashboard until someone behind her leaned on their horn. She drove around aimlessly for a few minutes until she found herself pulling into the parking lot of the police station.

"Gotta love the old subconscious," she muttered.

What to do now? Knowing how fond Lamb was of her, she could hardly go stalking in there, demanding to see Logan. She could wait for him out here, but who knew how long they'd be. He might not even get released tonight. So, she could go home, but the idea of leaving without saying something to Logan was untenable. Which left...sleuthing. Nearby.

She leaned back in her chair and tried to pin down the thing that had flashed in her mind after Gia left. It might have nothing to do with Logan, but she remembered seeing something on his list...

Yes, of course, Gia had brought him some pastry that day he got sick. She had even asked after him, said she had to tell him something important. And when Veronica had done her mad dash to the emergency room in his car, hadn't she seen something in the back seat? And at the end of Logan's list, just before she threw it back at him, she had read it: cookies.

Was that what Gia was so sorry for? That some woman had blackmailed her into poisoning Logan?

Frantically, she dialed her father's number again. "Are you okay?" he whispered.

"Yeah, I'm fine, but I need your help. Listen, when the police impound cars after crime scenes, where do they go?"

"It depends. Logan's car is probably in the back lot, if it hasn't been towed already."

"How do you know I'm looking for his car?"

Her dad sighed. "Sweetie, it was a drug bust. Even Lamb can't arrest people on charges like that without evidence. You have no idea what he's gotten himself into. Go home."

She couldn't do that, so she changed the subject. "Dad, why didn't you tell me Logan destroyed the tapes?"

She could almost hear his surprise. "I was...waiting for the right moment. I wasn't sure how you'd take it."

"He should never have seen them," she said, softly.

"It should never have happened."

----------------------

How long had he been here? At least four hours, though it was hard to tell without a clock or a goddamn window.

"You know you're violating the Geneva conventions."

Lamb stopped his pacing and smiled. "What, is your cell too small? You want to cry to mommy? Oh, right, I forgot. She's dead."

"I have to go to the bathroom."

"That's funny, because I heard your little stunt left you without any working kidneys. You're probably just trying to escape."

"How, following the North Star? Fuck man, just let me go to the bathroom. We can continue your little sadomasochistic charade when I get back, all right?"

Lamb leaned forward on the desk. "Seriously, I'm having trouble with this one. Kidney failure, bathroom breaks? Doesn't add up."

Logan clenched his teeth. "I'm renally compromised. I get to have the fun-filled experience of painful urination, daily dialysis and liquid restrictions. Now can I piss on your goddamn pot?"

"Please?"

Fuck, five more minutes and he'd do it in his pants. "_Please_."

Lamb stood up and grinned like a five year old boy who'd just cut a worm in half.

"Let me get you an escort."

----------------------

The back lot was adjacent to a sandy patch of woods favored by crack addicts, heroin junkies and their dealers, but that apparently hadn't induced the Lamb regime to invest in sturdier security. The padlock on the metal gates was at least ten years old. Tricky, but she could pick it. She knelt on the tarmac, put her picks between her teeth and got to work. Ten minutes later, she held the open lock in her hand and pushed back the gate.

There were only a few cars parked in the lot, but Logan's was thankfully still one of them. The doors weren't locked, which was good since carjacking was a skill she had not picked up from her father. Unfortunately, as soon as she opened it up she realized that all the evidence had already been cleaned up. The cookies were gone from the back seat, along with his California-Mexico road maps and Homer Simpson doll.

She stared at the seat for a long time, breathing and thinking. What else could she do? Without any evidence here, how could she get the results from Lamb? Even worse, knowing him, he probably didn't even get the cookies tested.

But they were cookies. Logan said he'd eaten at least one, and as any cookie-lover knows, they leave lots of crumbs. And how thorough could Lamb's cleaning crew be?

Carefully, she leaned over and looked through the crevices. A little behind the middle seat, she finally found pay dirt: a row of dirty blond crumbs that she could only pray came from the Cookies of Doom. She scooped them into a little plastic baggie she'd brought just in case and closed the car door.

So, now what?

Wait, of course. But fuck, she was sick of being this scared. How would he react? She needed to _know_, not anticipate.

He was sitting on the hood of her car.

But maybe not quite so soon.

----------------------

Lamb looked royally pissed when Logan came back from the bathroom.

"He's out," he told Sacks, not even looking at him. "His lawyer called. Bailed him out of possession."

That perked him up a little. "Lawyer? Lavoie?"

"No, that two-bit McCormack."

Which was music to his ears. Logan tried not to fall asleep on the papers some new deputy gave him to sign. Then they handed him back his effects, which included a cell phone with just enough juice left to call Weevil and tell him to pick him up.

"What'd they charge you with?" he asked.

"Possession."

Weevil whistled. "And you're innocent of all charges? Because I've already had my fill of the drug business."

"Like Sacco and Vanzetti."

Weevil didn't get the reference, but Veronica would have. He was thinking that just at the moment he walked outside and saw her car parked out front. The lady herself was nowhere to be seen. He could no more prevent himself from walking to the car than a duck could stop walking to the water.

_What is she doing here?_ he thought. An actor awaiting his entrance.

----------------------

His knees were pulled up to his chest while he stared at the road. His hair was a mess, but she'd always sort of liked it like that. His face was sallow, and she could feel his exhaustion from here--many times worse than hers.

"They discharged you?" she asked, when she was close enough. She couldn't bear not to speak--their silences were always so destructive.

The look he gave her was positively unreadable, with his face so tired, his eyes so raw.

"This afternoon," he said, finally. "Two glorious hours of freedom that I shall always treasure. Because now the fun starts all over again." He turned to her. "You: 'Logan, I can't believe you're a mastermind drug czar poisoning our classmates with those putrid narcotics.' Me: 'But Veronica, why would I do that? You've known me for years.' You: 'I don't care. Lamb has evidence and really hot abs.'"

Veronica punched him in the shoulder, but she couldn't stop her smile. "Logan, you sound like Mrs. Doubtfire."

"Sorry. My falsetto is a little rusty."

"And, for the record, I didn't come here to accuse you of anything."

She stared down at his hands, which were shaking slightly as they gripped the hood of her car.

"Well, that's a first," he said, his voice perfectly controlled. "Are you feeling okay? I'm always here to be your easy target, you know."

"Logan..." She could feel him looking at her so intensely that she glanced up--and regretted it immediately.

His eyes were bloodshot, burning and the feelings ricocheting through her body with such force were almost too powerful to identify. Oh God, how long had it been? She closed her eyes, but then his hand brushed her knuckles and they flew open again while she gasped.

"I'm sorry," she said. Unshed tears made her throat ache. "I made a mistake, I wasn't thinking. But you need help. You can't do this on your own." _You're so sick and I have no idea why. _

Logan's expression softened for a moment. He leaned forward until their foreheads touched, until she could smell and sense him so strongly she thought she might just pass out.

"You're right, I can't," he said. His lips brushed hers as he spoke, his fingers caressed the back of her hand.

She wanted it, but she didn't dare take it.

Slowly, Logan drew back and stood up. A car she hadn't even noticed pull up turned off its headlights. Someone opened the door.

"You ready, or should I get a magazine?"  
She recognized that voice, but it took her long, agonizing seconds to piece it all together.

"Nope," Logan said, his voice revealing none of the roiling, desperate longing she felt flying along her nerves. "I think I'm done here."

Weevil nodded a greeting, but didn't say anything. He seemed to know she couldn't respond.

"Wait," she said, just as he got in the car. "You said I was right. You said..."

"I can't do this alone. That doesn't mean I'll do it with you."

"But what if I learn something?"

He shrugged. "Send me an email. Put some passive into your aggressive."

He wasn't coming back. His lips had brushed hers and he wasn't coming back. There was something lying in front of her car, something white and crumpled. She recognized it from a foot away: his list. It must have fallen from his pocket while he sat there. Carefully, she picked it up and smoothed it out.

"Should have tried razors," he wrote at the bottom.

He was sick and he had touched her and she had nothing left but tears.

END Chapter Four

Author's Notes: Yes, I suck. I realized I posted the last chapter of this two months ago and I'm very sorry! In my defense, I'm pretty busy, but I know if anyone still reads this sucker it must be annoying. But I gave you a nice, long chapter, right? It was pointed out to me in the last chapter that I seem to have gotten the timing of Logan's age wrong, so...sorry. You'll just have to pretend that he's turning 18 in four months or so. Hopefully, I have avoided continuity errors in this installment. In other news, I love feedback, so gimme! And...

I have started a new blog with my friend called Two Fangirls (take out the space and add .com) where we will gush about all things Veronica Mars and other stuff we like, with quizzes, recaps, rants, etc. Right now we have a very large "So you think you're a fangirl" quiz up, which basically measures how crazy you are (yes, I am very crazy). Check it out ;)

That's it for now. Feel free to bug me if you think I'm taking to long for Chapter Five.


	5. Keep Still

Title: Bright, Chapter Five  
Author: Lois Fogg (Utsusemia on LJ)  
Pairing/Character: Logan/Veronica, ensemble  
Word Count: around 8,800  
Rating: R  
Summary: Post 2.17 AU. Logan's been poisoned, and the stakes have just gotten a lot higher.  
Spoilers: Through 2.17  
Warnings: A bunch of cursing.

Author's Notes (more at the bottom): I finished another chapter! This one is long, so I hope those of you who've managed to stick with me so far like this installment. This sucker takes some energy to write.

Chapter Five: Keep Still

He checked his email when he woke up the next afternoon, his head still aching from nightmares he didn't remember and in possession of what he suspected was some truly stupendous morning breath. He still felt exhausted, but marginally less shitty than he had when he dragged himself into bed last night, too tired to even bother unbuckling his jeans. Veronica's face when he left her in the parking lot seemed to have chased him through the night and into this morning, so that his hand had a slight but unmistakable tremor when he opened his email. "Put some passive into your aggressive" he had told her, a bit of deliberate cruelty he'd regretted in the pitch, solitary black of night, let alone this harsh morning. Because he wanted her the way he always had--like he had a gaping, bloody cavity in his chest that only she could staunch. Only, these days it seemed as though they might just be better off if she left him to bleed to death. One of them was better off without the other, but he just couldn't work out who.

Three new messages. None from her, and the immediate twist of disappointment was so visceral he had to laugh. Well, fuck, what did he expect? It took him a minute of staring blankly at the computer screen before he realized that one was from an address he had never expected to see. From a person he might have cared about a thousand years ago, for a second.

_Hi :)_ was the innocuous subject line. It was really too bad for Hannah that emoticons didn't come in pink.

_i'm sooo sorry i didn't email u sooner, logan! its been crazy busy over here -- new school yadda yadda. u know we have to wear uniforms? yuck, except some of the girls cut the skirts shorter so its a little better. anyway, i heard u were sick and maybe in the hospital too?!? omg i hope your feeling better now! actually that's why i decided to write u now because i thought of how horrible i would feel if u died and i'd just ignored u like some toddler. your not going to die, right? _

_anyway, i think i might have left something at your place. my mom can't find it anywhere and i'd feel so awful if i lost it. think u could look for me? its a gold charm bracelet. really old, i only keep it because an old boyfriend gave it to me. if you do find it, could you be dreamy and give it to my dad? i think my mom still doesn't like you._

_ttfn, xxoo_

_Hannah_

He spent a minute wondering if Hannah was being passive aggressive, but he finally settled on clueless. It was probably a bit hard to manage passive aggressive when you couldn't even manage punctuation.

He refreshed his email, and was rewarded with a note from a friendly Nigerian financial institution. Maybe Veronica was _really_ hard up for cash? Right. Time to cover up the hole and pretend to be normal. Fuck, he was going to find out who did this and beat the goddamn crap out of them.

It'll probably kill me, he thought, quite calmly.

He didn't care. He waited for Weevil to call and looked for Hannah's charm bracelet to pass the time.

------------------------------------------------

She knew there was a problem when even _Great Expectations_ wouldn't put her to sleep. She hadn't thought anyone could withstand the soporific lure of Miss Havisham's interminable creepiness and Pip's endless mooning. She finally gave up after a hundred pages--three times as much as she had ever managed to read continuously--and lay for hours, staring sightlessly into the dark. She didn't dream, precisely, but her mind was a jumble of confused, searing images she wished she could escape. Logan's hands around her waist a week ago, before he got sick. The physical jolt she felt at just the memory blended with his words and his face last night--the harshness, the cold anger, until she felt her throat close up with all the effort at not crying. She officially declared it morning at 5:30 am--still dark, but not unreasonable--and practically ran to the shower. She didn't know how anyone could be so simultaneously exhausted and unable to sleep.

The trial was in four days and she had promised Cliff she'd find him a case. At least she had some busy to keep her mind off the horrible.

Her father caught her at 6:30 am, making omelets and squeezing orange juice.

"I would have called the aliens in sooner if I'd known the whole body-snatching thing would work out so well," he said and yawned. His words were light, but Veronica saw the wary concern in his eyes. She wished that there was something she could do to dispel it, but he wasn't stupid, and he must have some idea of what the last few days had done to her.

Logan sitting on the hood of the car, Logan in the hospital bed...she shook her head and poured juice into a glass a little too energetically, so some slopped over the sides.

Her dad took a few steps closer. "Honey," he said tentatively, "are you--"

She turned and handed him some juice, forcing a smile she knew he would see straight through. "June Cleaver, I know. Anyway, I've got to go. People to intimidate, minors to emancipate."

"And school."

Her smile grew a bit less brittle. "Would June Cleaver miss school? Hey, this is Aaron Echolls, remember? I'll be drowning in people who think he's an asshole before first period. "

He seemed to relax. "Okay, June. Let me know how things go."

She grabbed her bag and walked to the door, and was grateful that her dad couldn't see her smile falter when she followed the metaphor to the end.

------------------------------------------------

He found the bracelet an hour later, peeking between the cushions of his television couch. He didn't ask himself how it got there--he remembered too much and too little of that night. Hannah being led away half-naked by her father, horror ripping across her eyes...he didn't think he was a good man, but he'd spent half of the night bent across the toilet, retching stomach acid as though it were guilt.

Someone knocked on the door, and he walked unhurriedly to open it, twisting the cheap, tarnished copper chain around in his fingers. It was very small, but he supposed Hannah was tiny enough. It must have sentimental value, because the charms were battered and almost unrecognizable. One, especially, that might have once been a pony, was nearly smashed flat. An old boyfriend, huh?

He opened the door and was only mildly surprised to see Weevil lounging against the wall, hands in the pockets of his low-slung jeans.

"I thought you were going to call," Logan said, moving aside so Weevil could come in.

"Wanted to make sure you were alive."

"My dad's offering a finder's fee?"

Weevil grinned. "Nah, but I think Lamb would pay some good money." He paused to take in Logan's still-haggard appearance, but didn't say anything. Instead, he gestured to the trinket looped around Logan's fingers.

"Nice bracelet. My little cousin's got one just like it. _My Little Pony_--very retro."

Logan stuffed it in his pocket and gave a faint smile. "I think your cousin should meet my ex. Does she like pink?"

Logan watched Weevil digest this and then put it together. "That Sophomore girl you screwed over?" he said, finally.

Logan nodded.

Weevil whistled. "And they call _me_ an asshole. Seriously, _My Little Pony_?"

Logan had been thinking the same thing. It wasn't nice to hear it said aloud, but then again, he'd invited it. "I didn't know about that."

"And you would have stopped if you did? Yeah, I thought so. Let's go, Casanova."

"You have a lead?" Logan asked, pocketing his wallet and room key.

"A hunch. We're going back to basics: write what you know."

"Weevs, I think '101 Unconventional Ways to Use Duct Tape' might be a hard sell."

"Method 1: making smart-mouthed jackasses shut up...I don't know, there may be more demand than you think. Anyway, fortunately for you, my expertise extends beyond duct tape."

Logan shut the hotel door behind him and they started walking towards the elevators.

"Such as?"

"Drugs, campadre. I hate the shit, but I know who deals. Whoever is trying to set you up seems to have a lot of it. Someone must have heard something."

"Ah, the unassailable logic behind shakedowns everywhere."

They walked through the lobby, and Logan made a point of ignoring the concierge staring at Weevil and his uncovered tats as though he thought he might steal the silverware. Asshole.

"How do we get them to talk?" Logan asked, when they walked into the bright early-morning sun.

"Intimidation," Weevil said, walking to his car. It was parked brazenly across two handicapped spots, as flamboyant and out of place in this sea of luxury status statements as a bumper car.

He looked at Logan across the hood and something made him wince. "But maybe you should wait in the car."

------------------------------------------------

Veronica walked into first period English five minutes late, clutching an extra large black coffee like she might fall down without it and an expression so stormy even her teacher refrained from saying anything. Aaron Echolls--man-whore, womanizer, wife beater, child abuser, and (let's not forget) truly atrocious B list actor had somehow managed a veritable metamorphosis behind bars. Apparently while she hadn't been paying attention, the man who had ruined her life had been rehabilitated by the press into an innocent patsy, victimized by his status and accused of a horrible crime he was of course incapable of. Even the women he had used like dirty tissues stood up for him now. Veronica couldn't tell if it was cynicism or star-struck gullibility, and she didn't fucking care. Without the tapes and without any witnesses, how was she going to convince a judge that Aaron was an unsuitable father? How was she going to get Aaron away from Logan in time, in case he got worse, in case he decided to assert control of Logan's medical decisions?

She drank an inadvisably large mouthful of coffee and felt it sear the roof of her mouth before settling in her empty stomach. It was an old trick, using pain to make sure you're alive. She had always noticed how much more..._vibrant_ Logan seemed than anyone else around him. She had never thought that might be why.

She had promised Cliff a case. Logan _needed_ a case, though she doubted he would thank her for it. It all depended on how far she was willing to go, didn't it?

They were on William Blake in English, and though she had not been paying the slightest attention to a word her teacher said, her eyes snagged on a few lines from a poem on the page in front of her.

I dried my tears, and armed my fears

With ten-thousand shields and spears.

How far was she willing to go?

------------------------------------------------

"You're skipping out?"

Wallace hurried after her through the school parking lot, still chewing the brownie he had nabbed from the lunch table when she left.

Veronica turned to him and tapped her watch. "You have class in five minutes."

"So do you."

"Do I? It's Friday. I'm sure _someone_ told me that class is optional on Friday."

"Was she really old and selling apples? 'Cause I don't think you should trust her."

"Wow, Wallace," she said, opening the car door and tossing her bag inside. "Way to cram in the threatening female archetypes."

"Thank Disney. You'll have detention for a week if you skip."

She closed the car door and smiled up at him as she rolled down the window. "No I won't."

Wallace paused, suddenly wary. "Why not?"

"Because you're going to tell them I got sick. Cafeteria meat didn't agree with my stomach."

"Why should I?"

"Because I'm your bestest friend and you wouldn't want to see me stuck in yucky detention?"

He raised his eyebrows and rocked back on his heels.

Veronica sighed. "Snickerdoodles?"

"Now that's what I'm talking about! Hey, you should get some rest. I told you not to eat that mystery meat. Probably pigs' knuckles or something." He gave a mock shudder and Veronica had to laugh.

She was about to drive off--her smile already fading--when Wallace put his hand on her arm.

"Hey," he said. "Call me if anything happens, all right?"

After a moment she nodded. It was reassuring, she thought as she drove through Neptune's streets into a more unfamiliar area of town, that Wallace was worried for her. She was too busy to do it for herself.

The house was small, the front-yard garden abundant, the Spanish omnipresent. A few of the kids playing in the street outside gave her curious looks, but no one else seemed to notice her presence. A gringo in this neighborhood was an oddity, but nothing too remarkable. Her car kept her anonymous--as long as she wasn't one of the 09ers they worked for, they didn't much care.

She walked up the steps and cooled her heels on the small porch while she waited for the slow, shuffling steps to answer her knock. Her stomach twisted and shivered and she wondered frantically, even as the woman inside pulled back the deadbolts and chains, if she should leave--run away and stop this before she couldn't turn back. But she stayed where she was, she armed her fears. She even managed to summon up a smile when the small, surprisingly frail woman opened the door.

"Veronica Mars?" the woman said, peering at her through her glasses.

Veronica was surprised she recognized her, though she didn't know why.

"Leticia Navarro," she said, her voice as steady as she could make it. "I need to ask you a question."

------------------------------------------------

So, shaking down contacts with Weevil went something like this. First, Weevil would pull into the stoop or back lot or car shop where the stooge was ('stooge' didn't really sound like the right word, but it did sound like something Humphrey Bogart would say, which put it somewhere in that hazy region between retro-cool and embarrassing). They'd both get out of the car and Weevil would go up to the guy while Logan stood in the background--hopefully affecting a menacing presence with his wrap-around aviator sunglasses and deliberately obvious bulge in his pants from the unloaded gun. Weevil would be all chummy and Spanglish and "my grandma was just asking about your second niece's boyfriend." The chump (also of hazy coolness, but so lovely to pronounce) would smile warily and thump Weevil's back or offer him a cigarette and ask about how his grandma was doing. Semi-hostile formalities concluded (circling each other like tigers, he swore, although he wondered what that made him. Probably the fucking gazelle--the one that _doesn't_ make it across the river), Weevil then dropped a line about wanting to know the word on the street about a big shipment of meth, suspected dirty. At that point, muscles tensed and the chump/stooge/unsavory character inevitably focused on Logan, leaning against a nearby wall (a dual benefit of looking both casually menacing and staving off exhaustion). The first three times this technique produced unsatisfactory results--i.e. Logan and Weevil chased away by preteen hoods, Spanish curses and/or junkyard dogs.

The fourth time they finally got some goddamn information. At Weevil's pointed suggestion, Logan waited in the car while he went out to shake down some poor kid still in the throes of adolescent acne. The kid was attempting, not very successfully, to ride his trick bicycle up on one wheel. He had fallen on his back, wheels still spinning beneath him, when Weevil approached him.

"Hey, Carlos, your mother know you're skipping school again?"

The kid scrambled to stand up, but his jeans got caught in the gears of his bike and tore with a loud rip. He fumbled to disentangle himself a bit too long and Weevil summarily picked him up by his collar and pushed him against a nearby wire fence.

"Hey, you got school too," he said, squirming against Weevil's grip.

Weevil grinned. "Yeah, but I'm bigger than you, nino. Besides, I'm here on business. You heard anything from your brother, lately?"

"Yo, Weevil, Tomas don't tell me nothing! You know that. I'm just riding my bike--"

Weevil nodded in mock sympathy. "Minding your business, I know. Still, funny that you just happen to be skipping school out here the day your brother has a big shipment due, huh? And this," Weevil casually dipped his hand into the boy's shirt pocket and pulled out a chunky cell phone. He clucked his teeth against his tongue and Logan had a moment of grudging admiration. But then, he guessed that well-honed intimidation techniques were part of the required skill set of teenage gang leaders.

"Wow," Weevil said, turning the phone over in his hand. "This is some piece of shit. It was new when, '99? Funny, I thought I'd heard Tomas was doing pretty well for himself, these days."

The kid glared at Weevil, but he looked too embarrassed to be intimidating. Key shakedown technique number one: poke where it hurts. If that fails, kidnap them and threaten permanent damage to their extremities with loaded guns. Well, if it came to that, at least Logan knew Weevil's cronies had very nice cell phones.

"What do you want?" the kid said sullenly.

Weevil relaxed his grip. "There was a big shipment of meth sometime in the last few weeks. Possibly tainted. Tomas got his fingers in it? Any rumors?"

"I've heard some. Something big came in with an issue, but it was an upfront deal, no one to take it back."

"Who?"

The kid lowered his voice. "Fitzpatricks, I heard."

Weevil laughed briefly. "The micks, huh? Figures, something this dirty. So what'd they do?"

"Popped a cap in whoever sold it to them."

"Anything else?"

"That's all I know, I swear! Come on, let me go."

Weevil looked at him for a moment and then released his grip with a slight shove. The kid stumbled to his bike and pedaled off around the corner, his knees comically almost as high as his shoulders on the tiny bicycle.

Weevil's face was big with a self-satisfied smile when he climbed back in the car. "I knew I should have left you in the car," he said, grimacing at Logan.

"I'm wearing sunglasses."

Weevil turned the key in the ignition and started to navigate his way through the local streets. "A well-accessorized corpse."

"They're still stuck with the meth," Logan said, changing the subject. "They killed the dealer, but they're still stuck with tainted meth. What are they going to do with it?"

"Sell some to us, of course," he said, turning down a side-street that ended in a cul-de-sac. Logan recognized the little house immediately. After all, he had just bought it, and now he had to turn the deed over to the woman who had lived there for the past fifty years.

Logan turned to Weevil and arched his eyebrows over his sunglasses. "Wow, so how does your grandma like the meth business?"

Weevil shrugged and parked the car across the street. "Well, the pension your parents gave her was so generous!"

Logan didn't pay any attention to the cars parked on the street but he still felt a strange subconscious frisson when he and Weevil climbed the steps to his grandmother's porch.

There were voices inside. Both he recognized, and one he wished to all fucking deities he would never have to--

She opened the door before Weevil even had a chance to go in, before Logan had prepared himself to do more than stare and ache and long.

She paused in the doorway, one hand still draped over the knob, and met his gaze. The vertiginous free fall was so familiar, so fucking exhilarating that he shivered. God, could he just touch her jaw, kiss her until her breath grew uneven and her hands strayed to the belt on his jeans and they both thought they might die if they just didn't fucking do it, right there, against the lime-stained bricks of Leticia Navarro's house?

"Hi," she said, softly.

------------------------------------------------

"Is this about my grandson?" Leticia had said when she opened the door and led Veronica to the kitchen. "Is he in some trouble again?"

Veronica sat on the edge of the plastic-covered seat and slowly sipped her glass of sweet powdered ice tea. Leticia looked...old, and sort of beaten into frailty. Veronica had never thought of her as young, but she had always been vigorous. Now, she moved with a cane and her smile was strained with a layer Veronica immediately recognized: pain. It made her feel worse about what she was going to ask, but she knew she would do it anyway. All her other choices were even worse.

"No," Veronica said, "Weevil's fine. I need to ask you about your old employers."

Leticia looked surprised. "The Echolls? Weren't you dating their boy for a while?"

Veronica's hands started shaking so she put the glass down on the table. "Not very long," she said, attempting to keep her expression neutral and knowing she was failing, "just a few months. How long did you work for them?"

Leticia's mouth twisted and she leaned back in her chair. "Fifteen years. And then they fire me like I've known them fifteen days. At least Lynn made sure I got my pension, rest her soul."

_Deep breath, Mars._ "So, you've known Logan for a while."

"I changed his diapers."

"And you know Aaron."

"Cleaned his house for fifteen years, but I don't think he would even remember my name." She gave Veronica an appraising look. "But, yes, I know him."

"You know what he did to Logan." It came out in a breathy rush, shaking around the pounding of her heart. She needed the details and she didn't want to know them.

Leticia met her gaze for a moment and then looked away through the barred window to the street beyond, where a few kids just home from school were playing hopscotch.

"Lynn gave me the pension," she said, still looking through the window. "She helped me keep my health insurance. I wouldn't have survived this past year without that."

"Do you really think she'd want you to protect him after all he's done?"

"She was so afraid of it coming out."

"She's dead. And Logan...he needs your help."

Leticia sighed and turned to face Veronica as though it hurt her just to move. "He was five, the first time. Aaron mostly ignored him before that, left him to Lynn or me. But when he was five, he went to his dad's room. He tried to put on one of Aaron's silk shirts, but he ripped it--a big tear, right by the collar." Leticia's voice was quiet, her eyes distant, but Veronica could feel her intensity like heat on her skin. "He was so upset. He started crying, right over the shirt, in the middle of the room. If he'd just come to me or Lynn, we could have...but he didn't. He was like that, then--impulsive and guilty. When Aaron found him in the room he told him what happened. He said he was sorry."

She stopped and it took Veronica a precious few seconds to find her voice. "What...happened?"

"Aaron threw him down the stairs and broke his arm. The first time."

Veronica concentrated on Leticia's legs--the thick ankles, the circulatory hose, the purple veins standing delicately beneath fragile skin--and forced back a rush of bile. _Five years old_. When she was five her parents had taken her to Disney World. They got into a fight over whether Veronica should be allowed to go on the Briar Rabbit ride, and Veronica had cried. Their first fight. She'd had stitches once, when Bud Crick pushed her off the swing set in third grade. She'd never broken a bone.

_Making out with Logan last summer, the hazy glow from the pool only faintly illuminating the curly bleached hair on his chest. The uneven ridges on his arm she'd fingered while he slept. _

But Leticia was speaking. "Who would it help? You can't make everything right. Not even for the ones you love."

"When he broke his arm, did he go to the emergency room?" Her voice was so rough she hardly recognized it.

"They took him to Dr. Finegold, just like every time."

"His pediatrician?"

"Lynn's plastic surgeon. Idiot with big muscles who wanted to be a movie star. Aaron strung him along with money and small gigs, he kept his mouth shut."

"Is he still around?"

"Busy cutting faces in North Neptune, last I heard." She shrugged. "But I don't get around much, these days."

_And why didn't you tell anyone?_ she thought furiously, unfairly. Why didn't Lynn or Finegold's receptionist or Logan's teachers or any other goddamn adult tell anyone? A perfect storm of silence. A festering, gangrenous wound that no one could bear to show the public. And now she would be the one forced to rip off the dressing to protect Logan from the man who had done this to him in the first place.

"On Monday," she said, standing slowly, "there's a trial to declare Logan an emancipated minor. Will you testify?"

"Against Aaron?"

Veronica didn't even try to hide the fury in her voice. "Yes."

Leticia held her gaze for a moment and then turned away. "I needed the job. I was raising three kids on my own, just a few years older than you are now. I didn't know what to do."

"Do you now?"

"Oh yes. I'll be there, Veronica Mars."

Veronica let herself out, still shaking and dizzy and entirely too affected by what she had heard. Anyone would be horrified at child abuse, but she knew her reaction went beyond that. She found herself in possession of an unreasoning, consuming rage--the kind that made you want to equally murder someone or break down and weep. She supposed she knew what it meant, but what good would it do to think about it? Like going emotionally unhinged was really going to help him? So she opened the door.

His eyes.

"Hi," was all she could think to say.

------------------------------------------------

She tried to mask it, but he heard the desire there, the intimacy. Like they were the only two people in the world, he smiled at her.

"Damn, is anyone in school today?" Weevil said, cutting across the moment.

Veronica looked gratefully up at Weevil as she stuffed her hands hastily inside her jeans. "I know," she said, scrunching her nose in that way that never failed to make Logan feel like death may be preferable to living without her (and that when he _wasn't_ feeling melodramatic). "Kids these days."

"So, what are you doing here?" Weevil asked, his bulk blocking her exit. "I think you're in the wrong neighborhood for Girl Scouts."

"I brought extra Tagalongs for the barrio?"

"Seriously."

Veronica shrugged uneasily. "I needed to ask Leticia a question. A case I'm working on."

And the way she very deliberately didn't look at Logan as she said this made him realize it had something to do with him. So, fuck. The girl really didn't know when to quit, did she?

Weevil considered this and then stepped aside from the door.

Veronica moved quickly past them, but not before Logan noted the deepening bags under her eyes that her hastily applied foundation didn't do a good job of covering up. She was pale, too, under the makeup and Logan wondered how much sleep she had been getting lately. Jesus, she looked almost as bad as he did.

Weevil seemed to notice it, too. "Hey, you doing okay, Veronica?"

She smiled too brightly and opened the door to her car. "Just a little stressed. I swear, I don't get combustion reactions _at all_. Anyway, I'll see you two around."

They stared after her, bemused, for a few moments after her car had vanished around the corner.

"She's nuts, you know that, right?"

Logan shrugged. "She's Veronica."

------------------------------------------------

Logan finally had a chance to give Hannah's dad her charm bracelet that evening. The meth-buying had been surprisingly straightforward. Everything seemed to work better when he just stayed in the car--which he was happy to do in the case of the Fitzpatrick's anyway. At least no one would notice if Weevil got another tattoo. Turns out he'd just needed to stop by his gramdma's to drop off some medicine, which Logan thought was rubbing it in a bit, but was also, he supposed, fair. It was a hard habit to get out of, really--being an ass when he wanted something. His mother had been so fucking guilty all the time that she'd do whatever he wanted when his father wasn't around. He'd smiled bitterly at the thought in the car outside The River Styx. He was such a fucking stereotype--blaming his mother for his father's horrors. She'd been far from a saint, but at least he was alive and not rotting at the bottom of a river. At least he had a shot at redemption.

Logan had left the two-ounce bag with Weevil, since he couldn't afford to get caught with any on him. Weevil, he assumed, had places to stash. Next week they'd find somebody who could test the stuff. He got his car back from the police--a hefty fine attached for illegally parking it in the ambulance zone when he was _about to die_--and drove to Hannah's. He was glad, in a clean and sincere way that shocked him, that she seemed to have forgiven him for what he did. He didn't deserve it. He had known it was wrong every moment he was with her, flirting and laughing and calculating. He had known it was wrong even when he fought to keep her--he couldn't make it right just by deciding to really want her. Nothing would make it right, but he could hope nothing would ever put him in that position again. He was too honest to pretend that he wouldn't do it again if the back were pushed against the wall, the loaded gun to his head.

He pulled in front of Dr. Griffith's house and rang the doorbell. He felt way too tired to be nervous, which was good since the doctor looked none too pleased to see him.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, his hands clenched at his sides like he was seconds away from slugging him.

Logan backed up a step and slowly--so as to hopefully avoid any physical violence--held up the charm bracelet.

"Hannah left this at my place. She asked me to come by and give it to you. I'll leave now..." he trailed off. Dr. Griffith was staring at him like he was Banquo's ghost, which didn't really rate high in his list of comfortable situations.

"Uh, Dr. Griffith?" he said, when they'd been standing like that for nearly a minute. "Are you okay? Could you just take the--"

His voice seemed to shake Hannah's father from his stupor and he roughly yanked the bracelet from Logan's fingers.

"Thank you for bringing this," he said, voice low but relatively pleasant. "It's just a childhood trinket. I hadn't expected to see it, that's all."

Logan didn't quite know what to say to that, so he just smiled awkwardly and walked away--not fast enough to avoid hearing the door slam behind him.

------------------------------------------------

The good doctor Finegold was dead. Well, more like "despicably evil" and he'd technically been murdered, but the end of the story was the same: she couldn't get information out of a corpse. But if there was anyone Veronica desperately wished she could bring back to life for the solitary pleasure of killing him again, it would be the late Dr. Finegold, plastic surgeon to the not-quite stars. He had been killed in a rather grisly murder-suicide a year ago that she vaguely remembered from the local news. A former client, her health ruined when a clamp left in after a hasty tummy tuck turned septic, had marched to his front door, shot him in the head and herself in the throat. The girlfriend had been in the next room, and the girlfriend had been ten years old when Logan first came to see him.

Ah, Neptune. Nothing but pristine beaches, beautiful people, existential pain and dramatic exits. It was dark when she made it back to school, driving slowly because her vision had decided to make like taffy and leave smears of afterimage across whatever she saw. Her head pounded and her skin felt entirely too sensitive, as though she could feel every cheap synthetic strand in the LeBaron's driver seat. Slowly, she got out of the car and walked back into school. Well, at least she'd be playing her part if any of the teachers who thought she'd left sick saw her. If she looked even half as bad as she felt...

The receptionist said his old medical files were in storage, but Veronica hadn't been very surprised when a check of the electronic file didn't reveal a record for Logan--or any Echolls, for that matter. When you're getting paid hush money, you don't make medical files for your abused patient. Without a doctor to intimidate, she only had her word and Leticia's. She hoped it would be enough.

For now, however, she still had some leads to follow. She retrieved her camera from her locker first, immediately reassured with its weight in her hands. From where she stood, she could hear odd noises coming from around the corner--heavy breathing, and something ripping. Cautiously, she peered around, praying it wasn't a situation that would warrant a call to the police--because, really, she didn't need that hassle in her life right now--but it was just Beaver. He looked a little flushed, and he was standing in front of the lockers, surrounded by torn paper.

"Beaver?" she said, walking towards him. For a moment, something odd crossed his face, but then he smiled awkwardly at her and she relaxed. The school could be really eerie at night. "Getting an early start on this year's homecoming confetti?"

She looked at the lockers next to him and realized, with a start, that he had been tearing down the elaborate collage decorating Gia's locker. Sure, she had found the fairy posters and "My Heart Will Go On" lyrics a little nauseating, but this reaction seemed extreme.

She raised her eyebrows. "Let me guess, Gia asked you out?"

Beaver blushed and stared at the floor. "No, it's just I got stuck in detention with Clemmons and Gia's dropped out for the semester and he told me to clean her locker."

Veronica stepped closer and saw her big name card--the kind you get made on the Santa Monica pier with the cheesy Chinese-style calligraphy and pastel colors and animal illustrations--had been ripped in two. Cleaning out her locker? Veronica looked at Beaver and wondered, not for the first time, if Mac hadn't been better off getting out of this relationship when she did. She couldn't imagine having Dick for a brother made for easy social adjustment. She shook her head and casually opened up the locker--nothing inside.

"Where's her stuff?"

Beaver bent down and started picking up the torn up paper. "Goodman came by and picked it up earlier."

Too bad, since that's why she'd come back in the first place.

"She's really leaving?" Veronica said, when the implications of Beaver's rambling explanation finally hit her.

"Dick says she had a nervous breakdown."

But _why_? What did Woody mean by "alone time," anyway? Veronica made some excuse to Beaver and ran back outside, where the air was easier to breathe and she could see anyone before they got close enough to overhear.

Gia shaking and moaning on the toilet seat, apologizing for something she couldn't even say. It _had_ to have something to do with Logan, didn't it? But what could Gia possibly know? Why would it make her leave school? Veronica shivered though it was nearly eighty degrees outside. This was bad. Something bad had happened to Gia and though she didn't want to believe that her own father would be a danger to her, that's exactly what this felt like. That creepy smile, that practiced handshake..._oh fuck_. She stopped walking, abruptly, a few feet from her car. She must really be tired if it had taken her this long to notice what should have been obvious immediately.

_"I appreciate the offer, Veronica, but sorry. I think Gia's going to need a little alone time for a while."_

He had looked to the left while he said it, the muscles in his shoulder and neck tensed like a linebacker's. He was covering something up. He knew what Gia was so sorry about, and he had taken her out of school before she could tell anyone. And what would he do to her now?

Frantically, Veronica hunted through her cell phone for Gia's number. She'd called her at some point in the last few weeks, right? She found it right at the end of her call log--one more ring and she'd have lost it entirely. The line rang only once before a recording picked it up.

"We're sorry, but this number has been disconnected. Please hang up, and try your call again."

Maybe Gia switched phone numbers a few weeks ago. Somehow, she doubted it. Something told Veronica that Woody had made his daughter disappear, and she was too late to find her.

------------------------------------------------

He drove by her apartment for absolutely no decent reason except to see if her car was in the lot. She needed to sleep. It wasn't possible for anyone, even Veronica, to keep going like this. He wondered when she had last really slept, and had the nauseating conviction that it was probably when he got sick. Over a week ago.

But she wasn't at home and Logan's emotions were way too much of a fucked-up tangle for him to brave talking to her father. Hell, what would he say: "Your daughter is about to pass out if she doesn't get some sleep and I know it's probably my fault anyway, but I can read her better than you so trust me?" Logan snorted. No need to get thrown out of the same apartment twice.

He was debating between looking for her at the school and giving into his own exhaustion when his phone rang. For a ludicrously giddy moment, he thought it might be Veronica. Maybe she had a lead and they could snark at each other and she would hang up in a huff and he could go to sleep with a smile on his face that he _knew_ was stupid but couldn't get rid of.

But it was Cliff.

"Jesus Christ, did I get charged with something else?" he snapped, more annoyed than he should have been.

"I don't object to the worship, but the ending's a bit morbid. And no, you're still only facing possession, much to the delight of your future parole officer. I'm calling about the trial."

Logan would have hit his head against the steering wheel if it didn't entail swerving into oncoming traffic. "Lamb set a date already? Doesn't he need, you know, evidence?"

Cliff paused a moment, and Logan wondered if he sounded surprised. "Ah, not _that_ trial date. This Monday, children's court."

Logan laughed. "They're charging me as a _juvenile_ drug kingpin? Talk about ruining my street cred."

Cliff's pause this time was longer. "Veronica didn't tell you? She told me she had."

Logan sat up straight, suddenly alert. Anger was always great for temporary fixes. "About what, Cliff?"

Cliff sighed. "You have a date Monday to divorce your father. She's trying to revoke his right to make medical decisions for you."

Oh, _that_ trial. "Funny, it just slipped my mind. What about it?"

"Will you take the stand against your father?"

Logan shrugged. "Do I get to say what fucking asshole he is?"

"I trust you'll clean up the language in the court?"

"Sure. Anything to screw with him."

"Great. Just don't gouge out your eyes beforehand, okay?"

_But my mother's already dead, _he wanted to say, as Cliff hung up.

Anger vanished. Jesus, he needed to sleep.

------------------------------------------------

8:45 Monday morning, Veronica walked into the already-crowded courtroom of the venerable 10th Circuit Family Court. Logan's hearing wasn't set to start for another hour, but she huddled on a bench in the back, clutching a coffee and trying to ignore the disjointed images that shot through her head whenever she closed her eyes. She still couldn't sleep. She'd spent the weekend bouncing between Leticia and Cliff, practicing testimony, planning for contingencies. And in her spare time, she hunted through the yellow pages for labs sophisticated enough to check for poisons in her illicitly obtained cookie crumbs. Unfortunately, it appeared that "sophisticated" was a little-known antonym to "affordable."

It was funny, but once Cliff had heard Leticia's story, he hadn't said another word to Veronica about the time he was putting in. She was grateful--what Cliff had done for her went way beyond snickerdoodles, and she wasn't really sure how to pay him back. Unfortunately, the side effect of narrowing Leticia's stories down to the punchiest and most harrowing was that Veronica's own personal nightmare never seemed to abate. She knew she hadn't led the most relaxing life since Lily's death. She'd had plenty of things to keep her up at night, but always before there'd been some down time, a moment to forget about the hell and pretend to be normal. Moments where she could sleep without being afraid of the nightmares that might find her. But now...

She hadn't seen Logan once this weekend, and she hadn't spent a moment without him in her thoughts. She was helpless in the face of her horror. She had long since lost any claim to plausible deniability about her feelings for him. This was not lingering affection. This was not guarded friendship. This, she thought, staring down at what was probably her tenth coffee that weekend, was abject, helpless, die-saving-him-in-a-fire love. Love for the boy who would vomit at the smell of pears and had been permanently cured of any temptation to sneak cigarettes. Love for the man who would stare at her until she forgot her name, who would burn down swimming pools and use innocent girls like inflatable toys if the stakes were high enough.

Unscrupulous, passionate, self-sacrificing, selfish, damaged, brilliant, raw, beautiful--maybe they'd been doomed the moment they met.

No wonder she couldn't sleep.

------------------------------------------------

Lavoie and Logan walked in just as the Honorable Judge Thalia Gonzalez was calling the court to order. Had they been _talking_? Veronica glared at him, but he avoided her eyes and squeezed in next to Cliff at the plaintiff's table. It was hard to tell through the crowd, but he looked pale...maybe even afraid? She wondered how much his dialysis was taking out of him. She wondered if he would ever forgive her for what she was about to do. The court was packed, of course, since Aaron Echolls himself had been trotted out for the trial. He looked remarkably well-coiffed for a man who had spent the better part of the last year in prison, and just looking at him made Veronica feel simultaneously infuriated and terrified. It was hard to be calm when you looked at the man who almost burned you alive inside a refrigerator. Even when completely helpless, something about his malevolence itself seemed threatening.

Judge Gonzalez instructed Cliff to give his opening remarks, and he rose with what Veronica thought was a remarkable air of dignity--a word she didn't normally associate with her favorite lawyer in a cheap suit.

"Your honor," Cliff said, his voice a picture of resigned sadness, "Logan Echolls grew up in the home most of us think we dream of. Famous parents, privileged friends, virtually endless access to money and material wealth. But we intend to show that there has been a dark side to Logan's childhood, a pervading menace, a threat that first caused the suicide of his mother, the murder of his first love and near-death of his second."

Veronica sank low in her seat as dozens of eyes turned to stare at her incredulously. Oh fuck, she was going to _kill_ Cliff when this was over. She could see, however, that the judge was appreciative of the poetry of the situation, which she supposed was something.

"We intend to show, through the testimony of Leticia Navarro, the housekeeper to the Echolls family for over fifteen years that Logan spent his childhood in and out of doctor's offices with a series of injuries and ailments deliberately inflicted upon him by none other than his father. Yes, a victim of childhood abuse with the threat of its continuance even today. It is imperative that we emancipate this boy from his father, and take him out of this monster's control once and for all."

There was an eerie silence in the courtroom after Cliff's speech--one punctuated only by the furious clicks of cameras and the sudden rush of blood in Veronica's head. Logan was staring at her now, his mouth twisted in a smile so bitter she almost choked on it.

"Et tu, Brutus?" he mouthed.

"I had to." No sound left her throat, but he understood.

Lavoie's responding speech was strident in its denials and recitation of washed up C-list actors who would come to the stand to testify on Aaron's behalf, but Veronica barely heard it. Betrayal. Oh, Logan had his faults, but she always had his loyalty. He always gave her exactly what she didn't deserve.

She caught a faint, grudging smile cross his face when Leticia first took the stand. Of course, all emotion quickly fled when she began to speak. Cliff led her through it chronologically, and the cumulative effect of these stories (only five of what had felt like decades, glacial ages of torture--she could hardly endure it for a weekend, how had he managed for his entire life?) was devastating. Ten minutes into Leticia's testimony, Lavoie and Aaron were deep in whispered conversation and Logan's face was so deliberately impassive she thought it might shatter.

When Leticia finished, Veronica felt her muscles go slack and she closed her eyes in quiet, silent thanks. She saw the Judge's expression. That had to have worked. If it hadn't...she would not allow all this to have been for nothing.

Cliff turned to her and gave her a tight smile when Lavoie declined the opportunity to cross-examine. She tried to catch Logan's eye, to convey..._something_ of what she was feeling, to show that this hadn't been easy for her either, but he was still staring straight ahead. He looked like he was preparing himself, like whatever he was afraid of hadn't actually happened yet.

Cliff called Logan, and Logan walked stiffly to the witness box. Stoic, you might think, if you didn't know him, if you didn't know that something was scaring him so much he was close to physical violence.

_What did you do?_ That quiet space, before the nightmare.

"Logan," Cliff asked, his voice strident in the hushed courtroom. "Can you confirm for the judge the testimony we just heard from Leticia Navarro?"

Logan cleared his throat and leaned into the microphone. "No," he said, looking straight at his father, his voice hoarse with hatred. "No, he never did any of those things. He never beat me, he never abused me, he was a model father."

He didn't mean a word of it. It didn't matter.

In the midst of the following clamor--Cliff's shouted objections, Lavoie's smug answers, the frantic buzzing of a hundred voyeurs and court reporters--Veronica stumbled from her seat. She dropped her coffee cup and the black dregs splattered over her shoes. The sound of her breathing, the smack of her sandals against the marble floors, the weight of the doors as she pushed them open, struggling to get outside. Only those discrete sensations, devoid of any context but the desperate, unreasoning need to _get out_.

She wasn't sure how long she'd been standing outside when she came back to herself. She was in the back parking lot, away from the reporters who had congregated by the front of the building. She looked around for her car, but realized that she had left her keys in her bag back in the courtroom. So she looked around--aware she was very far from okay, but not sure what to do about it. There was a car in the lot with a surfboard strapped to the top that she was pretty sure she recognized. Dick was here? She hadn't seen him in the courtroom. Then again, she hadn't been paying much attention.

She blanked again. Next thing she knew, she was leaning with her back against a palm tree on the edge of the lot, swaying. Oh, _fuck_ Logan. She was going to puke or she was going to crash and she didn't have her keys and she couldn't go back into that courtroom and _fuck Logan_. The associated images came just a bit too clearly.

She laughed and leaned her head back against the bark. And when the tears slid across her temples and dripped into the hollows of her ears, she was surprised, though she guessed she should have known.

------------------------------------------------

The note had made him laugh, at first, and then punch his dashboard hard enough to leave a dent and bruise his knuckles. He supposed that was a character trait--first inappropriate humor, then unnecessary violence. They could get into his car. But he supposed that if they could get into his hotel room, the car wasn't much harder. At least they weren't long winded.

_Don't testify against your father. This is a warning._

And there, beneath the neat, typewritten note (text a little faint, as though the toner was low) was a picture. Veronica in her underwear in her bedroom, working late at night on her computer.

She was drinking a diet coke.

He got it.

In the middle of the chaos, the judge just gave up and called a recess until the following day. Logan ran out a second later, wondering where Veronica had gone.

Through her fucking bedroom window. He _got_ it.

He saw her almost as soon as he went outside. She was leaning against a palm tree, her head tilted towards the fronds. She looked down slowly as he approached, her eyes sliding away from him as though she couldn't quite focus.

"Veronica," he said, and fuck, couldn't his voice have picked a better time to go all raw and unguarded? He tried again, but it was worse than before, "I can't explain, but--"

"I didn't want to," she said, but her expression was distant and Logan wasn't entirely sure who she was speaking to. "_Someone_ had to say something. You were only five."

And before he could register that--which was good, because he could see a lot of great benefits to never registering that--she pitched forward.

He caught her, but he wasn't prepared for it and he wasn't exactly Popeye at the moment either, so they both sort of fell into the grass and mulch, her head and arms splayed awkwardly across his chest and stomach.

Before he could sit up, she moved closer to him and reached for his left hand. He froze.

"Veronica?" he whispered. What was happening? What the hell was she doing? He closed his eyes and tried to will his heart to slow down, his arms to stop trembling his fucking dick to, ah, stop (though he was enough of a teenager to take reassurance from the fact that it didn't).

It didn't work. He opened his eyes again and looked at her. Her tangled hair was draped across his arm, her mouth was open and he could feel her steady breathing graze his stomach.

She was asleep. For the first time in how long?

Keep still.

Gently, gently, he wrapped his free arm around her.

For the first time in how long?

_Keep still._

END Chapter Five

Author's Notes: Okay, I know this is the most slowly updated fic ever, but even though it might take me a while, I promise I'll finish it. In other happy news, my fic Nightfall won Best Short Story in the last round of Pirate Pride Awards. Pretty nice, and you should just check out the rest of the winning stories since they're awesome. Also pretty nifty (and this is my own fic, so yeah I can self-pimp) is my blog Two Fangirls (the address is really obvious). We're having a fun weekly VM fanfic contest during the hiatus, so come by and vote and nominate. Okay, plug over. Hopefully, you'll see chapter six in a month or so. And I love feedback!


	6. A Spy in the House of Love

Title: Bright (Chapter Six)

Author: Lois Fogg (utsusemia on LJ)

Pairing/Character: Logan/Veronica, ensemble

Word Count: about 5000

Rating: R

Warnings: I like to curse. And you wouldn't believe how slowly I update.

Brief A/N: No, you're not dreaming.

More notes at the bottom.

* * *

Chapter Six: A Spy in the House of Love

The bed was familiar, its smell a vividly-remembered dream. She snuggled against the thousand thread-count sheets and groped blindly, expectantly for the familiar warmth. But it wasn't there. He wasn't there. She groaned slightly, still more asleep than awake, and buried her head between their pillows, wondering if he would come back soon, or if she would have to get him, because she had that certain itch and he was never less than enthusiastic about scratching it.

"Logan," she called, in _that_ voice, with its unmistakable throatiness and hints of arousal, and suddenly she recalled not where she was, but the more crucial _when_.

"Oh, fuck."

She sat up, opened her eyes fully, and saw Logan sitting on the chair by the door, a curious expression on his face—desire and pain, like she'd punched him in the gut while giving him a hand job.

"I take it that's not a request." His voice was light, with just a hint of strain. His face was still pale, but a little less haggard than it had been yesterday, when—

She didn't want to think about that.

"I'm fine, Veronica," Logan said quietly, as though her thoughts were captioned on her forehead. "You collapsed outside the courthouse, I brought you here. No shenanigans ensued."

That made her smile. It was easy to miss those odd Logan-words. "So you're out of shenanigans, but I'll give you twenty for some hanky panky." She paused. "That didn't come out right."

"I'll pretend I didn't hear it," he said, but tempered with a smile. He stood, and the slight lethargy of his movements could easily be early morning fatigue, or just stiffness at not sleeping in a bed all night. It could be, but she knew it wasn't.

_"No, he never did any of those things. He never beat me, he never abused me, he was a model father."_

The words rang so clearly in her ears that for a moment she wondered if Logan had repeated them aloud, in the sort of mean-spirited taunt that she thought they'd finally left behind them. But he merely stood by the door, his eyes watching her: concerned, yet oddly patient. It made her want to hit him, to grab the nearest hard object and hurl it straight at his disarmingly tousled head. Why had he done it? Why had he destroyed everything she and Cliff had spent so much time working for? How could he have just ruined his life and still give her that stupid fucking look, that post-coital, post-laughter, just-left-the-ladies-room look that erased every barrier they'd ever erected between them, every reason they'd ever had to hate and just-fuck each other? That look wasn't 'just' anything—it was too open, too vulnerable, too astonished and too fucking happy. It looked like love, and there had been too many revelations in that courtroom yesterday for Veronica to want any part of it.

"So you must be happy," she said, flicking each of the words from her tongue like poisoned darts.

He paused, wary. "You forget I've seen you sleep before, Veronica."

Well, _that_ made her breath catch. "Regret you didn't get more out of your investment?"

_The look_ vanished, replaced by something equally familiar, but more congenial to her present mood. "The previous user didn't exactly give rave reviews."

_The previous user didn't exactly get them_. But she was not about to give Logan the pleasure of hearing that. She shook her head and tossed off the covers. Fully clothed, thank God. "Funny, the last time you slept with a woman she ran all the way across the country to get away from you. Classic Echolls. Between father and son, you could teach Freud a thing or two about projection."

He winced—just the slightest tightening of his already tight eyes, but she noticed it and was surprised by the hollowness of her victory. She had meant to hurt him, hadn't she?

"I'm leaving," she said abruptly.

He let her pass as she stalked to the living room. She found her shoes upside down by the couch. Had they fallen off, or had he removed them?

"I'm sorry."

She looked up, startled. His eyes were shuttered, but they weren't cruel, and she found that even she couldn't retreat into superficial sniping this time.

"You just killed yourself, Logan. Hey, it's on delay, but Aaron doesn't want you to testify. You're a lot more useful to him dead than alive. And now he can make medical decisions for you."

Logan had bunched the corner of his tee-shirt in his right hand and was twisting it over and over in a gesture he didn't seem to be aware of at all. He looked...anguished, the way he had right before he testified.

"What is going on, Logan?" she said, walking up to him before she could stop herself. "Why wouldn't you admit—"

"Why the fuck didn't you warn me?"

Because you wouldn't have agreed. Because I couldn't bear to face you. "I...I mean, we—"

But he was furious now, gesticulating wildly, his voice so loud she winced. "Mrs. Navarro, the staircase...all of it in front of those jackals, and my father just smiling. And I still had to do it."

"What do you mean you had to?"

His eyes focused on her again. He took a shuddering breath and dropped onto the couch. His face was even paler now than it had been a few minutes before. She wanted to touch him. Oh fuck, it hurt her how much she wanted to. But they moved as though separated by a pane of bullet-proof glass.

"You should leave, Veronica," he said softly.

Her hands were shaking. So were his. For once in her life, she listened to Logan Echolls.

"I'm not safe to be around," she thought she heard him say, very softly, as she shut the door behind her. But she pretended not to hear.

* * *

It took him a long time to get up off the couch, to pull the old tee-shirt over his head and decide he'd better make sure housekeeping changed the sheets today. Either that or fall asleep with Veronica's smell on his pillow, and he wasn't in the mood for any reminders of the promises she wouldn't keep. He took a shower; the pressure from the designer head made it feel like his skin was being flayed. Or maybe that was just the dialysis. Everything seemed to hurt a little more, these days. _Classic Echolls_, she had said. He laughed, and even that sound seemed to scrape against his throat. "Classic Mars," he said aloud. Hurting everyone else to pretend she wasn't hurt.

Weevil called him when he was toweling off. "Man, I can't believe you're making me do this. That girl's gonna hand me my balls on a platter if she finds out."

"Consolation prize: put it on YouTube."

"Nah, they're too busy looking at you. Heard the video of Vee's Perry Mason impression hit twenty thousand last night."

Logan scowled. "Dude, do you even own a computer?"

"You are so lucky I'm too busy spying on your ex in her underwear to fuck you up, man."

"Also, that I'm a sickly cripple far beneath your manhood."

"Whatever. I'd make an exception."

Logan paused in front of the mirror and forced himself to stare. "Jesus. I look like shit," he muttered.

"Acceptance is the first step along the path to recovery, Echolls."

Pale as a sheet, except for the bruises beneath his eyes. And he thought he was doing better. Guess that's what he got for barely sleeping in a chair all night while Veronica sprawled across the bed.

Wait. "Underwear? I swear to God, Weevs—"

"Hey, hey, she's fine, calm down _campadre_. Not like I can tell her what to wear since you've made me hide out here Ted Bundy."

"No, you're _protecting_ her from Ted Bundy. Well, Ethan Lavoie. Even worse."

"Gotta tell you, doesn't feel like that. It feels like creepy stalker. It feels like superwoman is going to get a whiff of this in one more second and drive a stake through my heart."

Logan pulled on his most comfortable pair of jeans. "That before or after she makes you kung pao testicle?"

"No judgment. She's your fucked up girlfriend."

"_Ex_-girlfriend," he said, with a drunk's overemphasis. And looking like it's going to stay that way. He pulled on his second-best green tee-shirt, a supple piece of distressed fabric that looked like he'd plucked it off a homeless hippie in Haight-Asbury. That sort of carefully crafted poverty was worth a hundred dollars at Abercrombie. Maybe he'd find a casual way to drop the price tag in conversation and she'd yell at him for being a typical over privileged 09er. Strange that the prospect seemed so enjoyable.

"So you haven't seen any sign of him?"

"The only threatening male I've seen is papa Mars."

"Who has an abiding interest in testicles himself."

"If I die, you had better take care of my grandmother, or I swear I'll haunt—wait, I think I see..."  
Logan's heart started to pound, which in turn made his head swim and he had to sit back down again before he fainted. "What is it? No, never mind, I'm coming—"

"Hey, I know you're an 09er but attempt to curb the ego." Weevil had lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper. "I can do this a lot better without having to look after your sorry ass. There's some guy at the front door."

"Lavoie?"

"No. No, it looks like one of the micks...what the fuck would they be doing—"

"Take some goddamn pictures!"

Logan bit his lip as he listened to the muffled sounds of Weevil fumbling with the camera Logan had bought for last night. State of the art digital, tiny enough to fit in a pocket, and he was thinking that maybe he should have stuck with some fucking Polaroids. After the proverbial eternity, Weevil picked up the phone.

"Think I got a few. Stupid camera—I mean, do I look like a photojournalist to you? I've seen him before, but not much. Probably one of the Fitzpatricks' new recruits."

"What was he doing?"

"Just slipped something under the door and left. And something tells me Vee won't buy it if I say I was just in the neighborhood."

Logan groaned, tension leaving his body like water breaching a dam. He'd stashed the photos in his glove compartment, but the deceptively innocent images had haunted him throughout his fitful sleep. Someone was threatening her to get to him. Lavoie was the most obvious choice, but he didn't see how even Slimy Lavoie could seriously get involved with the Fitzpatricks. None of this made any fucking sense. It was like a Rubik's cube or a crossword puzzle or one of those stupid drawings where he was supposed to see a parrot but all he could see was a pineapple. Puzzles made him want to gnash his teeth and hit something. They made him want to hunt down Veronica at her locker and wait for her to put the "Out of Order" sign on the girl's bathroom door.

But he didn't dare ask for her help now. If there was one skill Veronica had never learned, it was how to protect herself.

"Echolls? Hey, are you all right? You need me to call...oh, fuck."

Logan had sprinted to the door under an impressive burst of adrenaline before the sounds of distant cursing and crunching gravel gave way. Someone had picked up the phone again. But it wasn't Weevil.

"What are you doing with him?"

"Does Abelard and Heloise mean anything to you? Think Abelard."

He heard Weevil cursing in the background. "Huh?" Logan said.

Veronica sighed. "History, Logan, will get you into college. But in the meantime why don't you come over before I tell Leticia what I caught her grandson doing."

* * *

"Show it to me," said Veronica in the booth of El Corazon, a local Tex-Mex joint.

Logan and Weevil glanced at each other warily before regarding her with expressions they so endearingly believed to be impassive.

She sighed. "Whatever the fuck it was that made you forget how you broke your arm three times, Logan."

If it was possible, Logan seemed to turn even paler. "Veronica, I—"

"He don't know nothing, Vee," Weevil said. "Neither do I." He leaned back in the seat and crossed his hands over his chest, the smirk on his face positively sphinx-like. "We plead the fifth."

Logan broke into a wry smile and briefly met her eyes. "I appreciate the support, Weevs," he said. "But I think Veronica prefers enhanced interrogation techniques."

Veronica dimpled, aware of the blush radiating from her cheeks but determined to ignore it. "We FBI types don't really like that pesky constitution. Hand it over, boys."

"Or what? Sleep deprivation and Bon Jovi?"

"Stress positions and Sleater Kinney."

Logan's sudden grin was so dazzling she wished she'd worn sunglasses. "Mercy, lady. Here."

He slid a few shots over the counter—banal photos of some girls on a ski trip, grinning at the camera while draping their arms around each other in the sort of displays of girlish solidarity Veronica herself had once found, well, obligatory if not precisely uplifting. Only one of them had taken off her ski goggles, and Veronica vaguely recognized her as a current Sophomore at Neptune High. An 09er. The others might as well have been sock puppets, for all she could see them through their expensive parkas and fur-lined hats. Only that one on the end looked a bit different—rail thin and her jacket was Lands End, not Burberry. The rest snapped into place a second later, and she shoved the photo angrily back in Logan's direction.

"Poor Hannah. Still blaming your exes for all your fuck-ups? Nice work if you can get it."

"It isn't always about you, Veronica." His voice was intense; his eyes locked hers like a tractor beam.

_No_, she thought and didn't have the breath to say. _But sometimes even that hurts_.

He bumped her knee. She felt the brief contact like electricity, and even her fingers seemed to tingle with it.

No, wait, that was paper.

He'd passed her something beneath the table. Carefully, because now she thought she understood the meaning of that over-intense gaze, his manufactured argument, she glowered at him and then contrived to look under the table as though searching for her purse.

A photograph, and a piece of paper. She read the note first, since it was easier to make out in the shadows, and then contrived to pull the photo into light for just a moment while she palmed her wallet. More than enough time, after all, to piece what must have happened to Logan moments before he appeared in the court room. No wonder he looked so terrible. She was aware of a disastrous impulse to touch his hand, perhaps insist that he sleep. She shook it away and stood up.

"I think I've seen enough. And you know what's funny, Logan? I don't want to help you with it."

He shrugged and pocketed the decoy photo of Hannah and her friends. Veronica walked slowly from the restaurant, and though she knew it was impossible, she felt his eyes following her out like a caress, like a promise.

* * *

Logan found the disposable cell in his glove compartment—where he went to get his insurance information after discovering the slashed tires.

"Girl knows how to make a point," Weevil said, eyeing the damage. "Looks like a beached duck."

"Dude, ducks _walk_."

"I guess we do to, now."

Logan pocketed the disposable and phoned the insurance company on his own cell. Mars was nothing if not thorough. No need to screw up her plans by showing whoever might be watching them that she'd left him a present in the car. So they walked to the nearest bar, and Logan ducked into the toilet.

"I hope you enjoyed that," he said, when she picked up.

"My God it was cathartic." She paused. "Where did you get those Hannah photos, anyway?"

Logan tried not to take her thinly-veiled curiosity as encouragement. Veronica's control issues could land a lunar probe. "She must have dropped them in the car while...a while ago. I found them under the seat this morning."

"From anyone but you, that would almost be poignant."

"From anyone but you, that would almost be jealous."

She sighed. "So, funny you didn't mention yesterday that I was getting threats."

"What with you accusing my dad of child abuse, there wasn't much time. What do you make of it, anyway?"

"Telephoto lens, probably on a digital SLR. The image looks like it's been printed on a home machine. But it's all very expensive. I guess the Fitzpatricks could afford it..."

"If they could tell one end of the machine from the other. And that leaves—"

"Daddy dearest."

"There's a chance it could be someone else."

"How many enemies do you think I have?"

She let out a puff of muffled laughter. "You don't," she said, as he leaned against the graffiti-covered tiles, "want to know that. Listen, I need some cash. A bunch of it. I want to test the cookie crumbs I salvaged from your back seat, and the lab costs more money than this teenage sleuth has at the moment."

"I wish that surprised me."

"And Logan?"

"Hmm?"

"Get some sleep, okay? In the bed this time."

* * *

It was a measure of how tired Logan was that he forgot to ask her what the Fitzpatrick had delivered under her door that morning. Which was just as well, since she didn't know what to make of it herself. A simple note, but different paper and handwriting than the threatening letter left in Logan's car. That didn't necessarily rule out the Fitzpatricks, but it certainly complicated matters. This one had been written on thick off-white stationary with a watermark she didn't recognize, which probably meant it was too expensive to sell in the mall. The message was simple, in loopy handwriting from what she guessed was a blue fountain pen. Which really was a mystery in and of itself—the Fitzpatrick clan seemed like ballpoint types to her. Or maybe crayons.

_Twenty-five years_

_Or_

_1,000,000 E_

"What the hell?"

"You know, sweetie, I've always found 'heck' more satisfying, myself."

Veronica looked up at her Dad and grinned. "Would you rather I say f—"

"Depends on the situation. Cliff just called. He made closing arguments this morning. The judge is set to rule in a few hours."

"Fuck."

Her dad grimaced and sat next to her on the bed, which wobbled comfortingly beneath them. He put his arm around her shoulders, and the smell of his aftershave—the cheap kind you get at the drug store, with that distinct hint of paint remover—helped her relax.

"How are you holding up?"

"I've been better."

"Listen, I know how hard you and Cliff worked to help Logan, but...if he doesn't want to help himself, there's nothing you can do about it. He's had a hard life, Veronica. It's screwed him up. And you have a big heart, but I don't want you to think you can solve all his problems."

Veronica pulled away from him, furious and struggling not to be. "Someone poisoned him!"

He sighed and put his hands on her shoulders, forcing her to meet his eyes. "Here's something I learned the hard way, sweetie: addicts lie. Doesn't matter if it's drugs or alcohol."

"Yeah, Logan's screwed up. But he's not an addict. Someone planted those drugs. Someone tried to kill him with antifreeze."

"How can you be so sure?"

Veronica bit her tongue, hard, to keep from crying. Because of what she'd realized yesterday in the courtroom. Because she loved him too much to take the chance that he might just be telling the truth.

But be rational. Give him something he'll understand. "The pieces just don't add up. There's something else going on." He opened his mouth to object, and she hurried. "Just like with Lily," she said, and then hated herself for the look on his face.

She stood up quickly and slipped on her shoes. "I'm going to find Wallace."

"Oh, you mean at that institution of higher education I've heard about?"

She coughed, delicately. "This spring flu's a killer."

"Ah. And honey?"

"Yes, Dad?"

"Why is Eli Navarro parked a block away from our house?"

Busted. "Just in case Slimy Lavoie tries to do something before the trial, you know. Just...pretend you don't notice him. He thinks he's being inconspicuous."

* * *

Verdict in an hour. Logan's car was still beached in the parking lot of El Corazon, and Weevil was once again staked out in front of Veronica's place. Which meant he needed to get a ride. He was getting funny looks here, anyway. There was something painfully ironic about sitting in a bar and being unable to even drink water. Things got ugly if he didn't ration his liquid intake. So he called Dick.

"Dude, I so thought you were dead."

"If wishes were horses...or maybe just sports utility vehicles."

"Huh?"

"Anyway, you wanna give me a ride to the courthouse? It'll be fun. Like the end of _Empire Strikes Back_."

"You're freezing your body for medical science? Dude, that's even more awesome than sharks."

"No, more like the triumph of ultimate evil."

"Dad's going to win, huh?"

"At least it's familiar."

Dick squealed to a stop in front of the bar fifteen minutes later, surfboard on top and a half-smoked blunt squashed in the ashtray. All the comforts of home.

"You look..." Dick said, as Logan climbed into the passenger side.

"Like shit?"

"Like you need to get stoned."

Logan took the proffered blunt and inhaled deeply. "You have hidden depths, my friend."

"Don't hog the weed."

They were both happily blitzed by the time he made it to the courthouse—with barely five minutes to spare, since Dick didn't know where it was and Logan was too high to remember.

"Wait a sec," Dick said, as they got out of the car. "I want to stash this." He yanked a bag of at least five ounces of grade-A Sour Diesel from off the dashboard and popped the trunk.

It was the usual disaster inside, which made it a good place to hide illegal goods. A few boogie boards, beach chairs, at least four stiff towels and dozens of unopened schoolbooks. Dick was straightforward about his priorities. But Logan noticed even more junk than normal, including a few opened boxes with biohazard warnings and loose brown bottles with labels that had long chemical names. Even through the pot-induced haze, the sight vaguely alarmed him. After all, he hadn't had much luck with chemicals lately.

"What's all this?" he asked.

Dick slipped the pot under some towels and glanced to where Logan pointed. "Oh, that's the Beavs. Science experiment or some shit." He shrugged.

Weird, Logan thought, as they walked into the packed courtroom. Those chemicals looked pretty hardcore for a high school science experiment. But then he saw Veronica, leaning against the back wall with Wallace and everything vanished from his mind like smoke in a breeze.

* * *

Logan was staring at her as though he didn't give a shit who noticed. Like he was stripping her naked in the courtroom, or at least watching her do it. And she could barely look away, even after she noticed the surreptitious glances of reporters eager for even more sordid angles. He was with Dick, and she hoped his dilated pupils and slightly flushed cheeks weren't as obvious to the press as they were to her. Trust Logan to get stoned while charged with crystal meth possession.

"What do you make of this?" she said, handing Wallace the weird Fitzpatrick letter. A useful distraction.

He frowned. "Well, the first one's easy. Minimum sentence for possession with intent to deal Schedule II drugs."

Veronica stared at him.

"Oh, don't look at me like that. Two of my best friends in middle school are in jail now for this shit. Knowledge is power."

"Okay, Straight Outta Compton, what about the second one?"

He shrugged. "Do I look like a lawyer? Beats me. Maybe it's a measurement? Some amount of drugs? Looks like a shitload."

"Whatever an 'E' is...wait, hold on."

The courtroom was settling in, so of course someone had chosen that exact moment to call her. "Unknown" according to the caller ID. She nearly let it run to voice mail, but picked up at the last moment.

"Veronica?" said the voice on the other end, muffled and hoarse.

"Who is this?"

The woman repeated her name again, followed by a burst of sobs, and Veronica recognized those, if not her voice.

"Gia? Where are you? Are you all right?"

"I just wanted to tell you I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I should have known, I mean, I didn't really know, but I should have, I mean, he was my _Dad_ and I'd always wondered, but I never would have done it if she hadn't forced me, I swear. But you have to protect Logan, you promise? Because she hates him, she won't tell me why, but she wants him gone, Veronica—"

"Gia, tell me where you are. Anything you know. The state, the town, what the house looks like—"

"I have to go. He doesn't know I'm doing this. I..."

The line went dead. Veronica stared at her phone, battling back the sort of helpless dread that made her want to run back home and binge on ice cream and snickerdoodles. Or grab Logan and hide him somewhere safe, since it seemed like eventually, sooner or later, one of his many enemies was going to manage to kill him.

"Veronica?" Wallace said, touching her elbow. "What was that?"

She shrugged, but didn't respond. The judge was calling the court to order.

"Well," the judge said, looking between the plaintiff and defendant's tables. "I have heard your arguments. This has certainly been one of the more colorful trials of my career. But, in the end, a decision must be made. I found this choice easier than I expected, though no choice is without its pitfalls. The fact is, Logan Echolls is a very troubled young man, with a history of violence and substance abuse, and a credible case pending against him for possession and use of hard drugs."

Logan's expression was flinty, but Veronica was sure she looked as sick as she felt. She'd known this was going to happen. She'd known. But preparation didn't seem to help.

"However, Aaron Echolls has, by his actions, proven himself to be a dramatically unfit father. As a mother myself, I can hardly imagine what would possess a parent to so regularly inflict such suffering on their innocent child. Yes, Mr. Lavoie, I'm aware the plaintiff has denied his own counsel's accusations. And I do not believe him. If for no other reason that nothing else explains this young man's medical records. And so my verdict is to approve the plaintiff's petition for parental divorce, and to encourage him to seek the counseling he so clearly needs."

Veronica slumped in her chair as the rest of the courtroom erupted in a frenzy of talking and jostling so loud no one could even hear the judge's gavel. They'd done it. Despite Logan's best efforts, they'd done it. She felt relief like a slow rush of pleasure through her belly. Maybe she would still kidnap Logan, but not _just_ to keep him safe.

"Veronica!"

His bellow was loud enough to cut through the hubbub. He sounded...terrified. Quickly she stood up, and saw him shoving his way through the crowd, Cliff close on his heels.

"Get out!" he said, when he was close enough to speak. "You have to leave now."

It was strange, she thought, how easily she could follow the direction of his thoughts. "Weevil?" she said.

"He just texted me. Someone was on the roof of a building across the street from you, and now they're gone."

And this verdict was going to make some people very, very unhappy. Cliff looked between the two of them, frowning. "Logan, there's nothing anyone can do, now. It's over."

Wallace shook his head. "Yeah, maybe you should, I don't know, thank them."

Logan rounded on Wallace, hands flying and eyes flashing the way they always did when his put-downs were about to get operatic. She almost smiled, but that would have been disloyal.

"Friendly advice, when you have no fucking clue—"

She never knew what else he would have said. The spray of his blood splashed across her face before she even recognized the muffled sound of a silenced gun, fired a few feet away.

Logan collapsed on top of Cliff.

Someone screamed.

END Chapter Six

More from me: I find it sort of amusing that it has taken me a year and a half real time to write about twenty-four hours of story time. I know that no one thought I was going to finish it, and let's be honest, I still might not finish it, but I found myself thinking about this little thing the other day suddenly wanted to write it. Also, a few people have been semi-regularly emailing me and wondering if they might get to see how this story ends.

Basically I just sold a novel series to St. Martin's press and my enthusiasm for it (Vampires! Roaring twenties! Romance and funny dialogue!) has crossed into other things. Like the first serious attempt I made at a mystery plot—_Bright_. And I have to write the sequel to my first novel, _Racing the Dark_, which always makes me happy to procrastinate doing something else. If anyone at all is still reading this or cares, please comment! I need some encouragement while I write what I'm supposed to. And if it seems like I can get the inspiration again, I'll try to write chapter seven. But no promises.

Thanks for reading! And if you haven't, visit my website and check out my first novel. I'd appreciate it :)


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